Today I had a rather strange encounter with a seemingly nice man at Chapters. The whole thing started out rather nice, actually and then, whoa, my dishonesty radar went berserk.
Now, if you know me, and I realize that its hard to get that kind of insight from reading someone’s blog, I am a pretty morally relaxed kind of person. Nudity? Meh. Cussing? Double meh. Littering? Well, if you must.
But, stealing from a charity? No way, Jose.
Here is how it all went down. I went to Chapters today to buy a co-worker a last-minute gift certificate. Of course, I went at the time of day when all the street lights aligned and everyone converged on that particular parking lot all at once.
It was busy. The checkout line was wound around past three racks of magazines. The cashiers looked frazzled. And, rightly so, as there were only three of them (but that is a rant for another day).
So, I waited my turn and got to the front of the line, asked for my gift card and specified the amount. He rang it through on my visa and then I went looking for a gift card sleeve – those handy things that make a crappy gift like a gift certificate look like something special and well thought out.
So, he informed me that they were all out and that he forgot to mention that I could buy one of the special charity ones for a dollar. I bitched and moaned a bit about the fact that I didn’t have a dollar on me and that he had already finished ringing my other purchase through and I didn’t want to put a dollar on the Visa, but that I really needed a sleeve. Really, I don’t know where I was going with it, except that the part of me that needed one really just wanted him to produce a complimentary one from out of thin air or something. And that’s when he said it….
“You know, it’s all the same to me”.
He looked me right in the eye and practically dared me to take the damn thing. I shrugged, made some sort of non-committal noise and slunk out of the store feeling a very misplaced sense of shame, guilt, and something dirtier that I still can’t put my finger on. I mean, who does that? I get that he was busy, but still it was totally unacceptable. He has a crap tonne of bad Karma coming his way.
Not me though.
Luckily, I returned a missing wallet today to the Police Station on my way into work. Karma counterbalance. Works every time.
