"I like it when people cook for me, or I'll just order some take-out." - Famke Jannsen

Have you ever been in the grocery store with your children (or even just one child) and a full cart of groceries, and you are at the check-out trying to simultaneously hand the cashier your shopper’s card, unload your cart in a reasonable way ensuring the bagger doesn’t pack your bananas on the bottom and your forty pounds of laundry detergent on the top, keep said child from pulling all the gum off the shelves, and forage for your credit card, when you have someone behind you who apparently was never taught to wait his goddamn bloody turn, and you just want to snarl, “Buddy, BACK THE FUCK OFF!”?

Worse, my cashier has no bagger, and so as she and I try to bag quickly enough to get the rest of my cart’s contents on the belt, the guy behind me grabs one of those little divider sticks and starts unloading HIS cart. Even though CLEARLY I still have half a cartload of groceries.

“Ahem.” I say politely. “I still have all these –“ waving my hand at the stack of food in my cart.

“Oh! Oh, sorry.”

Finally get the groceries all rung up and bagged and stacked in the new cart, baby transferred, coupons tallied, and am ready to pay. I don’t recall swiping my card already, but I must have, so I punch the Yes button – $200.31 is OK.

The machine asks if I want money back.

I say No.

And then I say, “You did ring that up as a credit card and not debit, yes? Because it’s never asked me if I want cash back before.”
And I start to sign the credit slip.

The cashier says, “Oh, Discover cards always ask that.”

“Except I didn’t use a Discover card.” I say.

“You must have,” she tells me, and shows me the credit slip where it definitely says Discover.

“Except I don’t even HAVE a Discover card.” I say.

But guess who does, sonuvabitch?

That’s right, Mr. Impatient behind me, who in the interest of ‘being efficient’ (his words) and ‘being a raging pain in my ass’ (my words) had already swiped his credit card in the interest of saving, oh, what, three seconds?

Well, ha-fucking-HA, the joke’s on him because now we BOTH need to wheel all the way over to customer service, so his credit card can be refunded, and mine charged. Which takes something like ten minutes because there is great debate as to whether every single item has to be voided and then re-rung, or if they can just credit and debit the total appropriately. *I* personally don’t care – my child is busy snarfing a doughnut and charming the pants off the dry cleaning ladies. But Mr I-Can’t-Wait-For-YOU has to wait. And I am just evil enough to love every minute of it.

I know, I know, karma’s a bitch, and I’ll get mine. But next time, I won’t be so polite, I just may snarl, “Hey, buddy, back the fuck off.” It’ll take less time in the long run.