Thursday, July 12, 2007

My scales, my lovely, lovely scales

No explanation needed, other than Sunday nights seem to attract the true loonies – and I’m not talking Canadian currency here.

Him: “Do you have scales here?”
Me: “Umm, scales are sold in the hardware department.”
Him: “I don’t want a scale scale.”
Me: blinks
Him: “I want to weigh something.”
Me: “Uhhhhh. What are you trying to weigh?”
Him: “I’m flying.” Really? I need me some of that because it must be some guuuuuuuuuud soup.
Me: “OK. Hang on.” Calls supervisor for help, because I'm clearly not equipped to handle mental patients.

He explains again, but this time gets two neurons to fire at the same time and manages to get a sentence out.

Him: “I’m flying and I need to weigh my bags.”
Me: “You can put the bag on a scale.”
Him: “No, that’s not going to work.”
Me: “What kind of bag do you have?”
Him: “I want a big scale, like a big flat scale. You’ve got scales to weigh food here don't you?”
Me: “You’re not going to weigh a bag in the deli. We put food on there.”

Him: “Well how can you help me?”
Me: “Go get some scales and see what works.”
Him: “The bag is big.”
Me: “Find a big scale.”
Him: “Are you sure you don’t have bigger scales? Like at a hardware store?”
Me: “We don’t have that. We have bathroom scales.”
Him: “I’m going to go get the bag and come back.”
Me: mutters under breath “You do that.”

Three minutes later, he’s back pushing a buggy with a bag that would dwarf a military dufflelbag. It would hold a couple bodies. Lord, I hope it didn’t. Really though, I think Hannibal Lecter would at least shop at Target!

Him: “This is the bag.”
Me: blinks
Him: “Do you have a scale for this?”
Me: “Uhhhhhhhhh.”
Him: “Well, I need to know how much it weighs.” I'm dying to ask - "Where are you flying and why do you need that much stuff?

Me: “Put it on a scale and see what happens.”
Him: “It has soft sides and won’t stand on the scale.”
Me: “Look. Weigh yourself and then weigh yourself holding the bag.”
Him: “How is that going to help?”
Me: “Simple math.”
Him: comprehension dawns “Oh. Hey. They should give you an award or something.”

The absence of your presence is my only reward!

12 comments:

Anonymous said...

Sad thing is, they probably should give you an award.

Anonymous said...

Well done. I agree with Anon.

Frankly, we could all use some medals as rewards and thanks for the jobs we do around there. It's a retail war zone but with no medals awarded for survival.

Library Rat said...

Stupidity on that scale should be fatal.

Erin Bradley said...

This is how I weigh my cat. Fatso is 21 lbs. (I'm not a feeder, I got him that way).

Larry Kollar said...

Yup, that's the best way to weigh something that moves (animal) or flops around (bags).

But yeah, you deserve an award of some sort.

Heidi said...

Omigod. First of all, I can't believe anybody brings their bags into WAl-MART or any retail place for that matter in hopes of using a "big, flat" scale like the kind in the "DELI" to weigh their crap!

Second, I can't believe anybody expects their how-do-I-weigh-these-big-bags-that-don't-stand-up to be YOUR problem.

Man, I guess when you work at Wal-Mart, you need to be a mind-reader, Mapquest, and a counselor. Geez.

Anonymous said...

Thirdly, any bag that big and/or unwieldy is going to get rejected by the airline. If it's big enough to stash a body in and weighing it is problematic...dude, they're probably not going to take it.

Anonymous said...

Yup airline will reject the large bag ,,,, hey, I bet airline peeps have even better stories than wallywierd. Anyone know of an airline blog?
That would be great and insightful reading.

Raymond Woodbury said...

Next time you could just send him to a shipping store. He may find it cheaper to ship his crap with UPS than with the airline. YMMV, restrictions may apply, offer void in Tennessee.

Two quetions on past entries:

1) Do morons in significant numbers really spend $28.50 to Moneygram funds to their prepaid mobile phone rather than stride over to Electronics or the checkouts and buy a fill-up card for face value (or pennies under, at WM).

2) Now that ship-to-store is widespread, can I send a gift from the website to a store where a friend or family member is, or do I need to pick it up (i.e. with ID and/or the card used for the purchase)? So far I've found the web site shipping cheap enough, and was sending something to someone who would be home to receive it, or something that could be left safely, so ship-to-store hasn't been an option I've needed. (And obviously isn't meant to be, but is rather meant to generate traffic.)

Anonymous said...

Raymond, you can add the person you're sending it to as an additional pick-up person when you order something Site-to-Store.

lolz, in my very limited Wal-Mart experience, though, Site-to-Store has yet to take off. Someone ordered something similarly for me and the people at the StS counter weren't quite sure how to process the order yet and kept paging different people to try to figure out why the computer was constantly thwarting them.

When I finally walked out the door 20 minutes later with my thingy, they must've forgot to desense it in the melee, because the alarm went off and the old man door greeter ran after me and started screaming at me in Greek. Then he yells, "WHERE YOU GET?" When I showed him my receipts and explained it was from Site-to-Store, he was like "WTF IS THAT?!?" *calls everyone in store trying to figure it out*

I don't think Wal-Mart employees get paid enough to deal with that kind of shit on a daily basis. Hopefully for their sakes, Site-to-Store will fade gently into the good night from whence it came.

Michael Lehet said...

I did that trick when I weighed my dog....the only problem was I also figured out how much I weigh in the process.

Silly dog!

Songbird said...

Handy trick at the pediatrician's office, too, when wee ones are fussy. But I suppose that's just a repeat under 'animals'.

Of course, then the pediatrician knows how much *I* weigh, and then I have to kill him to ensure his silence...it just gets messy.