This Title Doesn't Have Anything to Do with the Post!

So, I just went to the grocery store and I only needed to buy two things. I bought an 8-pack of Irish Spring and a microwavable container of chicken noodle soup. I wanted to tell the cashier that I was buying things in alphabetical order.

Hilarious! Soap and soup, get it? Those are very close! He would have laughed so hard and I would have won the grocery store award for the funniest customer of the year! Then I would have won a shopping spree like on Supermarket Sweep and I would have gone to the hoses first because those are the most expensive items. Hoses and turkeys. But if I see that cardboard Jolly Green Giant, I'm running that huge motherfucker back to the checkout counter tout de suite.

So, this girl who works at Ikea hates me. For my birthday in September, I got a gift card from a couple friends of mine so I could purchase various items from the Swedish furniture giant. I went out and purchased things in September and, when it came time to pay, I forgot to use the gift card. Oh well, I thought. I can always just use it again later.

Fast forward to today when I bought some more items from Ikea. I was so happy that I found things to purchase which would let me use my gift card. I skipped merrily to the cashier so that she could swipe my gift card and I could walk out of the store without spending any money. As I walk up, she smiles and says, "ATM or Debit only, no cash. Is that okay?" Of fucking course it is. I won't be using cash. She'll be so happy because I'm following her rules.

She scans my items and, lost in a haze of the smell of fresh-cut wood from Swedishstan, I pull out my card and run it through the machine. My fucking ATM card. I swiped it, finished the transaction, and she handed me my receipt. I'm about to step away from her counter and I get that cold bolt of dumb asshole lightning that shoots through me and I stop. I reached into my back pocket, pulled out my gift card and said, "Oh, umm, I forgot to use this. I need to use this instead."

She wanted to kill me and she didn't hide that fact at all. She sighed like she just surfaced after setting the fucking free-diving record.

She said, "Hold on. I have to call a manager."

She was on the phone speaking quietly so that I couldn't hear her, probably calling the Ikeops to come arrest the fucking idiot with the nightstand. After finally hanging up the phone, she turned to me and said, "I'm going to have to give you cash back since you did ATM." That's fine. I'll take cash. It's the same as not cash except it is cash. That's how I reconciled it in my head.

She opened her register and handed me two $10s and about 15 $5 bills.

I'm surprised she was as nice as she was. I would have accepted a tote bag filled with nickels at that point just so I could leave and make the people standing behind me in line stop pelting me with their tiny fucking golf pencils.