Pink Eye, Self Checkout and Creative Thinking: Random Tuesday Thoughts Rebel

So last week I was all set to get back into this blogging thing and get around to all my cool peeps I’ve missed while inundated with the whole move to basement dwelling to move part two, but Murphy and his Law once again became stalkerish.  Hello?!   Pink Eye?  Really? 

It sucked pond water.  I wasn’t able to look at my computer screen for any length of time, because blurry vision and stabbing pain made it impossible.  I can’t remember the last time I ever had Pink Eye – or if I’d ever had Pink Eye in the past, even when Princess Nagger brought it home from school a few years ago.  

But this time, when Little Dude brought it home I apparently wasn’t going to be let off the hook a second time.  The first couple of days my eyes were watering so much, I had a dream I was like Sponge Bob:

Yep, that’s about how watery my eyes were.  I made sure I stayed away from everyone, and even though I had to do some grocery shopping at the beginning of my ailment, I kept to myself, made no eye contact, and wiped everything down with antibacterial wipes as I went along so as not to spread the germs to unsuspecting people.

Except for the one employee at WinCo, who decided she needed to give me a five-minute lecture about how the self-checkout is reserved for those with 15 items or less (as she critically eyeballed my cart that maybe  sported 20 items, 25 if you were to count the packages of lunch meat individually) and yet there is no sign posted anywhere about a number of items limit.  

The only signs posted clearly read “Self Checkout”, not “Express Checkout 15 items or less” like you see elsewhere, just SELF Checkout.  You know, so you can check your SELF out. (on a tangent, maybe they should have mirrors at these checkout lanes for those who truly like to check themselves out-out).

I was utilizing self-checkout so as not to subject a poor unsuspecting cashier to my germazoids and the one bloodshot eyeball spewing tears (since the other eye didn’t join the party until 2 days later), and couldn’t believe when this woman decided to lecture me about the preference of 15 items or less in the self checkout lanes.

First of all, if that’s the normal ‘rule’, then post it as such.  If I see a checkout that has a sign of “15 items or less” and I have 16 or more items, I don’t use that checkout.   

Second, when she stated “We prefer to keep the self checkout lanes for those with 15 items or less, so when we get really busy and someone only has milk to buy, they won’t be upset about this,” as she waved her hand over my cart containing 20-ish items that I was in the middle of scanning and bagging quickly and efficiently before she interrupted me.  

There were maybe 20 customers total  in the entire store  at the time (I like to shop when no one else is) and only one of those customers happened to be in the self checkout lane.  With five other/additional (vacant and operational) self checkout registers waiting for those urgent purchases of milk.

If only I had a sound effect app on my phone, I would have been tempted to play chirping crickets as I meaningfully looked around at the mostly empty store, with about 5 people total in the checkout area – three in line for the ONE cashier on duty, and two of us in an area of six ready-to-use SELF checkout registers.  

Instead, I nodded and said “OK, thanks”, then looked up at the sign to verify there was no sign of “15 items or less” and finished scanning my items and getting out of there as quickly as possible.  Hoping, of course, that since the nagging woman invaded my personal space to lecture me, maybe some of my pink eye germs landed on her.  Ahem.

I mentioned that Murphy and his Law seemed to take up residence here last week, I’ll have to fill you in on those details another time since this post is already getting too long.  Meanwhile, getting things set up in our new house is slowly moving along, and soon it will move out of feeling surreal to truly feeling like ‘home’.  

We originally planned to mount our TV to the wall above the fireplace, but since the mantel is very tall, doing so would cause neck cramps from watching movies so far up.  Or we’d have to invest in a much larger TV to compensate for the height.  Plus the bricks do tend to get really warm when we have a fire going, so that put a kibosh on the hanging TV mode.  

Instead, we decided to utilize my sideboard as a TV stand for our new TV, then I had the brilliant idea of mounting the hutch portion of it above the TV to give us shelves to organize our movies and games plus our DVD and gaming consoles between the two.  In order to mount it high enough to clear the top of the TV, we had to get creative since it was just the hubby and I tackling that job ourselves, and neither one of us are like the Incredible Hulk being able to hold that sucker up solo:

Having unpacked moving boxes sitting around came in handy, as we used them to prop up the hutch while we bolted it to the wall.  And yes, a couple of thick cookbooks also came in quite handy.  The end result:

I’ll be painting over the blue that originally complimented our blue dining room in PA – I figure a nice burgundy wine color will look nice to compliment the bricks of the fireplace.  Then I can organize our movies and games quite nicely.  Stay tuned!

That’s a wrap for this week – you know the drill, link up and join in the fun, everyone is welcome – random or not. Be sure to visit your fellow randomizers so they don’t feel so lonely.

.

Keeping the random alive – feel free to snag a badge and play along – one for my wino friends:

And one for my non-wino friends: