A caulking we will go

This guy came in Saturday morning. I've seen him in fairly regularly because he's a contractor and usually returns stuff he doesn't need or hasn't used to re-do whatever house he's working on a the moment. He must have avoided the Wal-Mart during December though, because his January return was one for the record books.

He came in and set his stuff down by the handicapped register (the one at Customer Service that's always a little shorter than the rest) and started pulling receipts out of a plastic Wal-Mart bag like they were candy. And he had about five bags of stuff with him.

I go over and ask "Do you need help sir?" He says no, he's got to get organized first. I leave him be. Unless they're fairly sharp, they're usually not able to organize that big a mess. Sure enough, ten minutes later he asks for help.

His problem is that he bought stuff to fix up this house at Wal-Mart, Home Depot and Lowe's. So before I start looking through any of the 50 or so receipts he's got for anything, I'm like "Give me the stuff and I'll see if it actually came from here." Less than half the stuff he had actually came from Wal-Mart.

And he had these sheets. I knew it was Target before I even picked it up, because the packaging was nothing like ours, but he was "sure this is Wal-Mart." I picked it up, looked at the bar code and then pointed "Sir, look right here — marketed by TARGET International." "Oh, I guess that's Target then." Uh huh.

He had paint, caulk, a caulking gun, more paint, paint brushes, rollers and all sorts of other mess. But the piece de resistance was FORTY — yes, FORTY — outlet covers.

And this genius, on this particular receipt, had decided to do the self-checkout on this one. Now, he had about eight different types of outlet covers, but only two sizes — small and large. So in his infinite wisdom, he decided that all the large ones were the same and all the small ones were the same. So he scanned eight of the big ones (using the same UPC) and then 32 of the small ones (using the same UPC) even though there probably weren't even that many of either of them in inventory. And customers wonder why there are never any of what they want on the shelf. It's because of stupid crap like that.

And it gets better. The ones he picked to scan were twenty-four cents. They should have been eight-eight cents or ninety-seven cents. I tell him and he's like "Do I get that much back?" I'm like "No, you get back what you paid."

So I start counting. And I count. I count how many he bought. And how many he had. And he keeps trying to INTERRUPT me. I finally ask him "Sir, please, I don't want to make a mistake with your money." That seems to simmer him down for a minute or two.

I have stacks of outlet covers all over the counter. Finally, he gets $27 and change back. And then he tries to TAKE BACK the stuff I just returned. I'm like "No, that's mine. You just returned it. The Home Depot and Target stuff are already in your cart."

He's like "Oh, my mistake." Dude, either you're a crook or so scatterbrained I so would not want you working on my house!