Trip To Home Depot

There are very few constants in life - death, taxes, dumb-ass teenagers, and 
having to wait a long time in line at Home Depot. Here in New Rochelle (New York), 
the "Queen City of the Sound," Home Depot likes to hire teenage girls as cashiers. 
While they are always pleasant and easy on the eyes, it doesn't seem that general 
intelligence is prominent on the hiring agenda.

Today I needed to venture over to Home Depot for some grout (I'm fixing the tile 
around my tub), a putty knife, a package of screws and plastic wall anchors, and a 
shelf unit (very heavy, had to bring it up to my apartment in 4 trips). It took me all 
of ten minutes to secure these items within the store prior to getting to the register. 
While looking out for a register, I lucked out and spotted a short line (the alarm bells 
should have went off) with only a lady buying a plant, and a guy with a cart full of 
lumber. Easy pickings, or so I thought.  The lady passed through the register pretty 
quickly, a swipe of the bar code reader, some exchange of dead presidents, and she was 
on her way. Next rolls up  the Norm wannabe with the cart full of wood. He has three 
different batches of eight foot pieces - two by fours (18), two by  twos (24), and two by 
ones (18). In addition he was buying three pieces of plywood and a circular saw. Being one 
who possesses an IQ exceeding my shoe size, I thought that this would be painless. Thus 
started my forty-five minute wait in line. <Alert to future shoppers: Always leave a buffer 
zone between yourself and the cart ahead of you. Doing so will allow you to turn your cart 
around and to not get sandwiched in by patrons who have followed you into that particular 
register alley.  I figured that I was being punished by the supreme being for some past 
transgression. For a moment there I thought I was at  the department of motor vehicles. The 
lack of frustrated petty government figures with napoleon complexes brought me back to 
reality.

The young lady operating the cash register, bar code reader in hand, attacked the pile of 
two by fours. One by one she "zapped" the labels to register the purchases. To her credit, 
she then counted the number of pieces and verified the amount against those shown on her 
little computer console. This didn't seem strange until she went back to the pile and 
"zapped" six more two by fours. (I had watched her run the bar code reader over each piece 
and was sure she got the count right.) She then went to the two by twos and ran the laser 
over each piece. She verified the count manually, then checked her screen. Surprisingly, she 
went back to the stack and ran the bar code reader over twelve of the pieces she already 
entered. (The guy buying the wood was just standing there like a crack baby.) Noticing her 
error, I walked over to her and said, "Your screen is scrolling. To verify the amount of 
pieces, you should check the register tape." At that moment it became evident that the New
Rochelle school system has not incorporated computer studies into their high school 
curriculum. She just smiled at me, clueless to what "scrolling" meant. She did check the paper 
tape and was dumfounded on  how the extra scans of pieces showed up on the tape, and not the 
monitor. Not daunted by this development, she ran some test scans as if she was  re-enacting 
Lawrence's first day with his newbuilt cyclotron. She only lacked the electron microscope and, 
of course, the particle accelerator. She made three or four quantitative reviews using her 
scanner and verifying her data against her CRT and paper tape. Perplexed, she called for a 
supervisor. I was amused, but having little or no life, I wasn't  yet ready to jump in and 
explain what was occurring. I was shamelessly having fun watching this. My only surprise was 
the purchaser of the wood. He remained standing there like this was an existential episode. 
Looking at him through this whole event, I could only think that when you  match a moron with 
a power saw, you ended up with a trip to the emergency room. Maybe the world will get lucky 
and he'll accidentally cut off his dick, thereby being unable to supply any further genes to 
an already polluted pool.

The supervisor arrived. This girl looked a little older, perhaps an actual high school 
graduate. The cashier explained the discrepancy between the union of the physical count, the 
scanner, the monitor, and the paper tape. The supervisor, in her aged wisdom, cleared the 
register of the previous actions and had the cashier start from scratch. (This is similar to 
the standard technical support direction of telling every customer to "reboot" their computer 
to remove the problem.) The cashier repeated her steps of running the bar code reader over 
the pieces, doing a physical count, counting the listings on her CRT, re-scanning the pieces 
she "thought" she missed, and end up having too many items listed on the paper tape. The 
"supervisor" like many tech support engineers, was dumfounded that the "reboot" and reentry
didn't work. The pair was about to re-enact this comedy for the third time when I felt 
morally forced to step in (I blame this on many years of Catholic school and a personal  
feeling of superiority). I explained to the pair of girls from "Three's  Company" that the 
physical count and scan count was correct, and that the error only occurred when they tried 
to verify the count by adding up the lines on the computer monitor. 

Speaking slowly, and using few large words, I explained that the computer monitor only 
displayed the most recent twelve lines of purchases scanned, that twelve was the monitor's 
limit. I further explained that the screen text would then scroll, like a camera moving down 
an image. It took me a couple of tries at describing this concept to them, but they finally 
caught on. Meanwhile, it looked like Bob Villa was doing his impression of a weed growing in 
anticipation of the New Rochelle's Community Playhouse's coming winter auditions.

Cashier and supervisor corrected the errors and ultimately scanned in the man's order 
correctly. He paid for his purchase and pushed his cart away, right into the doors marked 
"In Only." Luckily for him, a security guard came along and ushered him over to the correct 
exit. I was wondering how many times that guy was abducted by aliens.  The cashier quickly 
scanned my items through, while thanking me for assisting her. I gave he my credit card, 
signed the form, picked up my bag, and headed for the exit. I loaded up my car with my new 
purchases, feeling both amused and elated at the whole event. When I finally arrived home and 
was going to attack the tile project I was working on, I realized that the girl had not packed 
my grout in the bag. I  could only laugh. Oh well, tomorrow I'll visit one of those 
neighborhood hardware stores. They may not be as much fun as Home Depot, but I'm sure to be 
quickly in and out of the establishment with the right purchase.

Now I know why Dave Barry has to keep saying, "I'm not making this up!"