How glue can you make me feel?

********************SCAMMER ALERT********************

OK. I don't know you. I don't know your ugly bearded daughter. (Girlfriend. Wax, electrolysis, depilatory cream, razors, a goat, a lawnmower, a Weed-eater, something. Anything. You look like an alpaca mated with a Fuller brush.) You are interrupting a transaction I'm trying to finish just to say "HI" and use my name - because, you know, I'm required to wear a nametag. I have regulars. You are not one of them.

You interrupt the transaction of the customer ahead of you (woman returning some sheets) again to comment on my glasses. Because I have the fly designer frames. Seriously. I don't know you. I do know that you're as annoying as hell.

You keep talking. You start asking the woman whose transaction you're interrupting about her makeup, her handbag and her jewelry. It is like a pre-hymn church service up in here. Everybody is just so friendly - although the woman obviously doesn't want to talk to you - but she doesn't want to be rude. But I still don't know you.

You and your four-hundred-pound daughter - who's using one of the Mart Carts - finally pull up to the counter when the woman returning the sheets escapes (why can't I). Then we find out why you're trying to be so friendly. Heifers. You're trying to run some game. I still don't know you.

But I know you are scammers of a different order.

The leviathan-like daughter take the lead. She's wearing a spaghetti-strap top and terrycloth shorts about four sizes too small for her; she whips out a bag containing eight or nine boxes of water-softener and water-filter products. "My husband bought a different kind of filter. I looked all over but I can't find the receipt." Because I always buy $20o worth of stuff and throw away the receipts. It never existed on this or any other plane of existence.

I blank my face and start scanning. She keeps yakking. "Don't you think it is terrible how you have to buy one filter to purify the water and another filter and a tablet to make the water taste a certain way? Isn't that terrible? These people are just trying to rip us poor folks off." My stars. Seriously. Just shut up. If you want to scam, just shut your gaping maw.

The final total is $207. And change. **sigh**

"Can I see your ID ma'am?" With any luck, she's already got three returns and I can deny her.

She proffers up a huge paw and a tiny pink pocketbook with the drivers license in a see-through plastic window. I make to grab it and she yanks it back like I'm going for her bag of Funyuns. She's got it on a strap around her wrist. "I always lose my ID," she squawks by way of explanation. OK. Fine. We can play it your way.

I pull it as close as I can and I start typing and when I hit the fifth number alarm bells go off. She has changed both the "3s" in the number to eights with a ballpoint pen to try to get around the "three returns without a receipt policy.

ME: "Can you take your ID out for me ma'am?"
HER: "NO."
ME: "Ma'am. I need to see your ID."
HER: "NO."
ME: "Ma'am. I need to examine your ID."
HER: "It is glued in."
ME: "I need to see your ID or we will not be able to return these items."
HER: "WHY DO YOU NEED TO SEE IT? IT IS RIGHT THERE?"
ME: "Ma'am. That is not a valid ID. I need to examine it. You can take it out or you can take you items and leave."
HER: "It is a valid ID."
ME: "Ma'am. I need to see it. Can you take it out for me?"
HER: "It is glued in. I can't take it out because I always lose it."
ME: "That's fine ma'am. When you have a valid ID, you can return these items."

She looks at me like I slapped her across the face and then yanked a bag of Cheetos right out of her hands. All the while dancing around the living room of her double-wide dousing it with gasoline and throwing matches while singing "Big Girls Don't Cry."

Her mother asks her - right in front of me - "Well, how many returns do you have? I can't do no more."

HER: "Well I want my stuff back."
ME: "Certainly."

Ride that Mart Cart right on out of here. I hope you run into a sheriff's deputy and give him that same line of "it's glued in" crap. I hope you keep squawking that line right off to county lock-up.