Things That Stick In My Craw - A Little of This, A Little of That

Just general ranting and raving today.

I was in the parking lot of a store, sitting in my parked car, talking to my hubby on my cell phone. Out of the corner of my eye, I see a car headed straight for me. Horizontally. Across empty parking spaces, not in the road behind me. I said to my hubby, "Some old lady is going to hit me!"

At the last minute, she stopped. Not even a foot from my drivers side door. I couldn't believe it. She backed up and corrected her path into the road. WTF?

This is why older folks need to have their drivers test every year once they reach 65. I'm just sayin'.

I purchased a great deal from Groupon.com (if you haven't checked out the site, DO!) I got 3 movie rentals from Redbox (a kiosk at most grocery stores) for just $1 and bought 3 of those so that I got 9 rentals for just $3. Such a deal!

Printed up the first three codes to use while we were out shopping yesterday. Went to rent Despicable Me, put the code in, everything was a-okay and "your DVD is being vended" appeared on the screen. We waited. There were some grinding sounds in the machine. Hubby and I looked at each other. That was not a good sound. It was almost like the DVD was being shredded, not being vended. Waited some more. Still grinding sounds. I called the 1-800 number for Redbox and while on the phone with the guy, the screen suddenly went blank, then an error message that the kiosk was shutting down. So the guy apologized and said he'd email me a new code to replace the one I'd used. Cool!

Went to another store closer to home, put in the second code in. Invalid promo code. Okayyyyy. Redid it and used the third code. Again, Invalid promo code. By this time, I was frustrated and we went home.

Called Redbox and the girl listened to my story and checked my account and said a new code *had* been generated for the one where the DVD never came out, but the guy never emailed it to me. She then typed in the two codes I'd tried to use and she said they came up as valid. WTF?

She told me to just delete those codes and she'd issue me three new ones and emailed them to me while I was on the phone with her. Bless her heart. I got the codes and used one today to rent Megamind. No grinding noises, no error messages. Phew!

Today I went to our local Rite Aid. I'd gotten a promotional email that I could get 30 4x6 color prints for just $3 if I ordered them online, then pick them up in the store. Such a deal! Then I got a coupon for $1 off of two Butterfinger Snackrs, which were on sale for two for $1 at Rite Aid. Hey, you can't beat free, right?

Ordered the prints on the Rite Aid web site. Total there came to $5.70, but I knew they'd replace that with the $3 coupon I had. Or so I thought.

I went to Rite Aid, grabbed two of the Snackrs, then went to the photo register. A girl came and got my envelope of photos and I showed her the coupon. She said she'd take me at the register.

As she went to scan in the envelope, I tried to explain that I had the coupon and it was $3 for the 30 prints, not the price on the envelope, $5.70. She ignored me, scanned the two Snackrz, scanned the coupon so that they were free, then scanned in the $3 coupon and charged me $3 more. She actually told me $9.85 (15 cents tax). I mean, hello? You *did* go to school and pass basic math, didn't you? No, I didn't say that out loud.

I calmly pointed at the coupon and said the prints should have been $3.00, not $5.70, which is why it added $3.00 to the total. She looked totally confused, went to the store manager and came back to tell me it was $3.00 *off* - I said that would mean they would lose money (only 30 cents, but hey). She said no, it was $3.00 off. Okayyyyy.

So she voided the whole transaction and started over. Scanned in the envelope, $5.70, gave me $3.00 off of that, scanned in one Snackrs, looked at the coupon for that and said, "Oh, it's $1.00 off of two of them, so I'll just scan the one."

And promptly charged me 88 cents, then announced I owed her $3.76 instead of the $3.15 it should have been.

I'll break this down for you (and I hate math):

$3.00 for the prints
15 cents tax for the prints
0 for the snackrs
equals $3.15

Instead, she charged me:
$2.70 for the prints
15 cents tax
88 cents for the snackers
equals $3.76

At this point, I was ready to blow up. I just paid the frelling $3.76 and left.