patience

sortie, originally uploaded by impactmatt.

I always pick the worst lines at Ikea. For some reason my line picking abilities aren't too bad at the grocery store. But at Ikea I am definitely cursed. It frustrates me to no end to see people fumble with small change or have some issue with a price that could have been resolved on the sales room floor.

So much to my dismay, I walked into the worst situation yesterday.

I had finally found the right line. It was beautiful. Huge carts filled with poang chairs, ribba picture frames, and summat bed frames were being checked through with olympic like speed. I was in my line triumphant as I edged forward and other were at standstills. A couple more minutes and I would be out of there heading for the coveted exit. Oh yes... People in other lines were fading in the distance as I approached my cashier in her yellow and blue shirt. It was my checked flag!

Disaster struck.

With the end so near, the person in front of me brought my poll position finish to an screeching halt. The lady in front of me having all her items checked through brought out 35$ in cash to pay for a $156.32 tab... ok no worries... don't panic. Its just two transactions. I am still well ahead in the game. But the woman now looks at the total and it obviously is not something she agrees with. She indicates to the cashier to remove the 40$ gift card she purchased. I guess she had $100 limit. Fine... more time spent, but thats ok. I understand. I actually applaud her frugalness. I would just consume and take the hit financially. So now its down to $116.32. However this isn't good either. She asks to remove some unidentifiable kitchen item that looks like a crash between an exotic cheese grater, a wok, and a salad spinner. No doubt it had a clever name like balakspogrizt. Now her total is $105.04. Great... lets go people! Or person as it is in this case. I can see the sortie sign! But yet again this is not good enough. The woman is looking over her already-checked items trying to decide what else needs to be sacrificed. She removes a stack of napkins. "Way to knock of another 79 cents! Way to go!" I don't even bother to check the total now. This is getting to be too much. Obviously its still too much for her and she still has to find another way to lighten her load. At this point I look back and my line has now tripled in size. We are now this slowest line in the whole store... maybe in history. I see a row of unhappy faces behind me. I want to cry out to them, "I'm sorry but its not my fault! I am not with her! I too think she should be banned for life!" As I turn away to avoid the piercing glares my heart skips a beat. The woman has pulled out a cell phone and is now calling someone for advice.

NO! NO! NO! NOOOOOOOOOOOOO!

"For the love of all the holy! This has gone too far! Are you retarded?"

I felt so bad thinking that. Its not PC at all and its really insensitive. Especially in the light that the lady was mentally challenged. I am going straight to hell.

She was now off the phone and was removing a rather large box that was a sizeable chunk of the bill because now we were down to $56.93. So now her $35 seemed realistic. Break out that credit/debit card and lets get the show on the road! But no... needless to say after taking out every last bit of change from her wallet, starting with toonies, to loonies, to quarters, dimes, nickels, pennies, and even a token of some sorts she was still $13 short. There were a couple more phone calls thrown in for good measure and she was not understanding how she still could be short of the total. A manager politely came over and with another employee that picked up her stuff and started trying to figure out a way to help her.

The whole time I had been impatient, thinking about all the things I had to accomplish (ie get home in time for the hockey game) and I got upset at this woman. My time is precious... its my weekend. Whereas for this woman, it was probably a very challenging day for her. This was huge for her. My mind jumped to the conclusion that there must be some cosmic joke that I was not aware of. Why was this woman trying to make me late for whatever I had to do?

Through my selfishness, I did have a moment of clarity as I looked at my cashier. Through it all she was patient and very understanding. She took the time to count the change and manually remove items from the register and from the customer's bags. Never once did she roll her eyes or give one of those exasperated sighs. And it wasn't until it was my turn that she was replaced by another employee who had been standing off to the side of a solid 15 minutes while this whole procedure had been going down. This cashier was at the end of her shift and she probably wanted to get home, or at least away from work, more than anyone of us in line.

I have so much that needs fixing in me. I actually appreciated the opportunity to see the change needed.