Beware the Premature Swipe

So, I’m at Target today…

(Sigh…Target.  I heart Target…).

…buying a bunch of stuff for the guest bedroom.  One of my best friends and her husband are coming to visit this weekend.  I’m SO psyched.  And, while the guest bedroom is starting to shape up a little bit (I just bought this new bedding from Kohl’s, which was SUPER on sale online and still wicked expensive in the store…and, of course, I bought it on a $0.99 shipping day…and, wonders never cease…I actually really like it), it still needs a few…tweaks.

I bought a new area rug (well, more like a runner), a little nightstand, and some curtains for the window on the door (it’s super creepy changing in there at night - even though the window faces the fenced-in backyard…but, still).  I don’t have it all set up yet, but I’m hoping it makes the whole room feel a little homier (is that  word?).

ANYWAY, I get to the check-out line, and it’s absolutely mobbed.  I’ll never know why some Targets are so efficient at handling check-out and some just absolutely suck at it.  Lucky me…my new Target sucks at it.

I finally get up to the cashier, and she starts scanning my things.  She was perfectly nice, don’t get me wrong, but she says halfway through, “if you’re paying by credit or debit, you can scan your card now.”  And, I’m thinking, “um, no I can’t.  You people all say that, and I’ve tried that, but it never works unless I wait until the end.” 

Of course, that’s all going on in my head and, instead of saying it out loud, I say (sweetly), “ok, thank you.”

And, guess what.  It doesn’t work. 

Of COURSE it doesn’t.

And, you know how you’re just so irritated when you’ve been waiting in line for a r-e-a-l-l-y long time, and you’re all discombobulated with your purse and your cart and your car keys and your cell phone…and the person behind you is, inevitably, inching their cart up WAY too far into your personal space.  God, it irritated me, when she looked at me at the end of the sale and says, “it didn’t go through.”

Um, thanks, Master of the Target Obviousness.  So, I had to put my purse back down, get my wallet back out, swipe my card again, pick up all my loose change that fell out of my wallet while getting the card back out (I’m not even making this up), put it back in my wallet, put my wallet back in my purse, grab my car keys back out of my purse, etc. etc.  All the while, I can feel (at least) 5 angry sets of eyes boring holes in the back of my steamingly-annoyed head.

It’s the little things, you know?

Argh, Target, please please please stop telling your employees to encourage the premature swipe!  You’re killing me here!!!!!!!!!