2 and 1/10 cents per minute

(Added: uh, hi, Joanne Jacobs' readers. I have to make a little disclaimer and point out that the "some people" were the shopkeeper and assistants, not the university. I know rules are in place for a reason and the way things are run economically has to go smoothly....

...I hope this doesn't upset anyone too much...)



....that is apparently what my time is worth to some people.

I periodically have to buy certain lab supplies for the classes I teach. Sometimes this involves certain small businesses in town.

Small businesses that aren't always the tightest of ships, apparently.

We have a credit card issued by the university; it is an immense improvement over the old purchase-order system, where you had to be able to see into the future at the beginning of the semester and (a) predict where you were going to need to buy stuff to get the orders issued and (b) predict how much money you were going to spend.

But the credit card is not without its problems, one of which being that it (apparently) isn't immediately clear to the seller that "I'm buying these supplies for the University" means tax-exempt, even when that same person has made multiple tax-exempt purchases on the credit card in the past, and, in fact, there was a note on file indicating the tax-exemptness.

And being the Absentminded Professor I am, I sometimes forget to remind the shopkeepers. Usually they know, as I tend to buy supplies in the same place every year. But sometimes things get messed up.

Long story short: I was charged tax on something I bought.

$0.44 tax.

So, because that doesn't work given our system, I had to go back and get the transaction re-run. (And yes, the first thing I did was unzip my purse, pull out 44 cents, and try to hand it to the secretary to save myself the trouble. No go; the money is all centralized and there is apparently no entity I could hand my 44 cents to. Apparently the system only works on credit card receipts.)

And no, I did not check the receipt upon receiving it because (a) they never screwed it up before and (b) I was tired, in a hurry, and bordering on having a migraine.

So, having to run other errands, I figured I'd swing by the original store - let's call it The Emporium - to correct the problem.

I explained the problem, noting that while I had not explicitly said NO SALES TAX, she had rung me up before for prior purchases and not charged tax. And my university can't pay sales tax. So the 44 cents would need to be refunded. And I explained my attempt at an end-run around the whole problem, and its failure. "So," I summed up, trying to be jovial and not assign blame, "Because I can't just hand 44 cents to someone at the university and make it good, the charge will have to be re-run."

"Oh" the woman responded. "OhIdon'tknowhowtodothat. OhI'mnotauthorizedtodothat."

I stared at her, gobsmacked.

"I can give you 44 cents" she offered. "Or discount you the next time by that amount."

Um, no. Does not work that way. If you had been paying attention to my initial explanation, you would have known that offering to give me 44 cents does not work.

(I hate being ignored when I'm explaining something.)

I explained that that wouldn't work. She then added, "Yeah, when we switched to this new computer system, a lot of our tax-exempt customers got reclassed as non-tax-exempt."

Um - if you had known that, maybe you could have gone through the list and CHECKED first? Maybe you could have ASKED me when I came in buying stuff and non-tax-exempt popped up?

I said that I really needed the money back, and that would require the transaction to be re-run.

"Well," she offered, "Maybe you can come back when someone else is here."

(I have taken time OUT OF THE MIDDLE OF MY DAY to fix this. And spent the gas to drive down here [granted, I was already out but the Emporium is sort of out of my way]. Telling me to "come back" - especially when there is no helpful schedule of "This is when the owner who can do something is here" makes it impossible for me to plan.)

"Well, you see" I began, "I've already taken the time out of my office hours to come down here. And already probably burned 50 cents worth of gas. To correct a 44 cent error. I really would appreciate getting it taken care of today." (Well, I wasn't quite that calm, and I think I harped more on the "50 cents worth of gas")

So she sighed, and got one of the teenaged dudes out of the back room. And told him the problem. And he kind of stood there, like "Whaddaya want ME to do?"

Finally he said, "I'll TRY to fix it" and took the credit card and the old receipt and disappeared into the back.

I wandered around, looking at the dusty shop displays (The Emporium is the only place in town to procure certain items or else I'd shop somewhere else for them).

I waited.

And waited

And waited.

And looked pointedly at my watch while the original woman ignored me.

And some other teenaged guy came out and tried to strike up a conversation with me but I started giving off my patented "I am not quarry for you no matter what you might think; I am old enough to be your mother" vibe (Yes, I'm old enough to be the mother of a teenaged boy...that thought and all its implications scares me).

And I began to wonder - had teenaged guy #1 run off to Mexico on my department's credit card? Was he downloading all of Aerosmith's oeuvre onto his iPod from iTunes with my department footing the bill? What?

Finally he came out. Handed me a receipt. I signed for it (and as you will see in a moment, had forgotten the original number) and left.

It took - I am not kidding - 20 stinking minutes for the whole thing to get straightened out.

(I HATE, hate, HATE with a burning passion the feeling that my time's being wasted.
And yeah, I know, it's entirely possible the credit card company was jerking him around but considering that there were approximately 18 horny teenaged boy-workers hanging around that joint, you'd think teenaged boy #1 (who seemed more droopy than horny) could collar one of them and send them out to tell me that he was very sorry but it was taking a while and it would be just a few more minutes.)

Got back to the department. Handed the receipt to the secretary along with my tale of woe.

She looks at the receipt, checks something, and says, "The tax was for 44 cents. They refunded 42 cents. There is still 2 cents tax unaccounted for."

I told her I wasn't goin' back, not for anything. She's going to try to call and fix it but damn - I spend 20 minutes trying to get something fixed and they can't do it right? (And yeah, I should have checked the blasted receipt more closely. But at that point my allergies were so bad from the dust-fug that inhabits the Emporium that I genuinely remembered the tax as 42 cents.)

If I have to go back again? I'm taking a book. And sitting down in the middle of the floor. And reading. Just to make a damn point and so I feel like my time's not being wasted.

I really loathe bad, inattentive customer service. I can understand when there's a PROBLEM - if I am apprised of the problem - but I hate sitting around in the dark, so to speak, feeling the moments of my life drain away as no one tells me anything or gives me any hope that the problem will ever be fixed. But with a book to read, I feel like I'm doing something productive.

(And the reading would also take care of having to try to make small talk with the tribal-armband-tattooed, ripped-t-shirt-wearing bad-boy wannabees trying to flirt with me at that store.


Sorry, guys - I just tend to go for the intellectual type is all. If you had glasses and a proper shirt on I'd probably be more willing to talk to you. [well, also if you weren't below my "cutoff" age...])


Update: leave it to the Cats of LOL to capture the discomfort of making small talk with some creepy guy with a wandering eye....


see more crazy cat pics