stevesbets

I was walking home from Chipotle when I decided to swing by the grocery store on my corner to get some Mint Milanos (note to Mcdonalds and pepperidge farm, i take payment for blog product placement). The cashiers at this store are particularly incompetent so I wasn’t thrilled when I saw the woman in the only open lane struggling with a debit card. The customer was this little Asian woman that barely spoke English who was buying about 20 dollars worth of groceries.

She swiped her card, entered her pin and picked up the bags to go when the cashier stopped her and was like, ma’am there was only 3.14 on there, you have to pay the rest. The Asian woman said, 3.14, ok i pay 3.14. Cashier was like, nooo, you need to pay 16.73, there was only 3.14 on the card. At this point I noted that the card was unlike anything I had ever seen before, I have no idea what sort of debit card it was, but it wasn’t a usual one issued by a bank. The Asian woman responds (in a way that indicates no surprise or sadness), “i need this (pointing to like 14 dollars in her wallet) for taxi, I just take this one (and grabs one of her 3 bags)”. The cashier says “ma’am it doesnt work that way, you can’t just take a random bag of groceries for 3 dollars”. The Asian woman looked confused as the cashier called over 2 other workers to try to figure out how to deal with the dilemma.

At this point a couple options were running through my head:

1) watch the debacle, assume I’m going to be wasting the next 30 minutes of my life, and hope to come away with an interesting story
2) leave my mint milanos there and just go home. There was no movement by another clerk to open another register so I would certainly be waiting awhile if I wanted to buy them.
3) Be kind (but also kind of selfish to save time) and buy the woman her groceries so that the cashiers would not have to accomplish the impossible (for them) task of figuring out how to back her groceries out of the register.

What would you do?

I went with option 3. The oddest part of the story is, after I offered to pay, the clerks were visibly happy that they wouldn’t have to figure out how to remedy the situation. The Asian woman on the other hand collected her groceries without even looking back and walked out as if she expected someone would eventually take care of her. I suppose since my act was partially selfish, I shouldn’t expect any expression of thanks, but nonetheless another experience that I doubt will be repeated.

Something just happened to me that I would be willing to bet will never happen again. My friend and I were chastised for talking during the ads before the sneak peaks before the trailers at a movie.

We went to an afternoon showing of The Lovely Bones at 62nd and 1st. We arrived about a half hour early and we were the only ones in the theater. There were the usual advertisements flashing through the screen. People started filing in about 15 minutes before showtime. There were about 15 people total in the theater by 3:50 for the 4pm showtime.

Now let me set the stage. My friend and i were chatting in a voice well below a normal volume level but slightly above a whisper. The lights in the theater were on, people were checking their cellphones and munching on popcorn around us. On screen was a commercial about not talking on cell phones during the movie which was followed by about 2 minutes of elevator music with a screen saying “silence your cell phones”. Note that this was not the usual post trailer vignette about how silence is golden, this was an odd ad of sorts stuck in among the quirky games and commercials that they play before they get to the trailers. The lights in the theater were on and people were coming in.

Right as the people saying turn your cell phones off dissappeared and the sounds turned to the elevator music, a small, bearded, 50 something man with his wife 2 rows in front of us turned around and said in a nasty tone, “C’mon guys, I can’t hear A THING”. Both my friend and I were too taken aback to respond.

If you are an avid reader of this blog, you know that I despise talking during movies more than most people, I even included it in my blog about etiquette here. As I said in that blog, during trailers I prefer silence but you can’t get too bent out of shape if people are talking, particularly if the lights are still on (which varies theater to theater). However, I have never even contemplated that someone was capable of getting so frustrated by talking BEFORE the trailers that they would feel the need to say something.

I have read stories about people getting shot at movie theaters for getting into arguments, and while this guy was small, i figured that anyone who would get bent out of shape over people speaking softly during elevator music 10 minutes before the previews to a movie start, is someone with a high likelihood of being nuts. For that reason, I resisted the strong temptation to say anything back. My friend and I were talking on the way out of the movie about how we most likely will never see someone chastise someone else for talking at that point in a movie viewing again at that point of a movie viewing for the rest of our lives

I am celebrating with my family and my new niece ‘Betsy’. It is great to have a baby around as it adds a little something to the fun. Hope everyone is having a great day!

Hey everyone, in the first of my many exciting announcements to come in 2010, I have been selected for membership with team online pokerstars! I will be playing on the site under my usual name and will be increasing my general online presence. You can follow me on twitter under ’stevesbets’ and I will be posting on twoplustwo as ‘TGSB’.

More to come on this exciting announcement. For now you can track down my bio here by clicking on team online pokerstars and then finding me.

There is also a pokerstars blog article about the launch that mentions me here