Last night I went to the grocery store. Among other things, I bought two cans of kidney beans. The lady at the checkout scanned the first can just fine. When she scanned the second can, the computer beeped and said, "Price Not Found", so she asked the lady who was bagging my groceries to go to aisle #whatever and get the price of the beans. Here's what happened next:
Me: "Oh, why don't you just scan the first can again? That will save time."
Lady: "No, I can't do that. We have to get a price check."
Me: "But they're the same."
Lady: "We have to get a price check. The price might be different."
Me: "But they're exactly the same. And it's R5,99."
Lady: "No. It might be different. We have to get a price check."
So off went lady #2 for the price check. She came back about five minutes later and said, "I can't find them." Lady #1 told her to go back and look again, and several minutes later she came back and said, "They're R5,99." I wanted to say something, but I tactfully refrained! By this time there was a big queue behind me, but Lady #1 now had to wait for a manager to come over and enter a code to allow her to manually input the price. What could have taken five seconds (to scan the first can twice) ended up taking about fifteen minutes.
It is amazing to me how a can of kidney beans can ravage my sanity. The funny thing is, no one else seemed to care - not even the people in the queue. Time passes in Africa either quickly or slowly, and you can try to get things done, but if you don't, there's no point in worrying about it. The sun will rise and set every day whether you get your chores done or not, whether you make it to your destination or not, whether you eat or not. It's not worth losing your sanity over a can of beans, but I confess, sometimes I do!
2 comments:
That's funny... I would've probably went crazy!
i admire your self control. i would have gone crazy too. :)
hilarious title by the way.
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