The Jerk Store Called...They Broke Your Mold, Then Locked Up The Shards And Threw Away The Key

Today we sail past the finish line, arms above our heads, in celebration of completing Jerkapalooza, with Part 5 of the series whose mitigating factors began and concluded on Friday, when Mrs. Hillbilly Mom encountered a seemingly unrelated quintuplet of unpleasants, banded together unwittingly in an effort to get her goat.

I was at my next-to-last stop, the final one being the gas station chicken store for my 44 oz Diet Coke. But first I had to run in the Casey's two stores over, to get my Golden Ticket scratcher. I can't buy them just anywhere, all willy-nilly. I have a plan, based on the number on the roll of tickets. I keep a record of where I get them, and the numbers of the winners and losers, and can pretty much predict about how many tickets each place sells during a specific time period. No use buying a ticket from a roll where you've already gotten a big winner. Since I have a plan, I always have my money counted out. I know which tickets I'm going after, and how much it will cost. That's how I stay on my budget, balancing wins and losses.

I stepped up to the right-hand register and handed the clerk a $40 winner to cash in. I asked for a Golden Ticket ($30) and a $1000 Frenzy ($10). The girl tore off my tickets and scanned them. Then she pushed them across the counter to me, opened up her register, and handed me a ten-dollar bill. I was perplexed. I had bought $40 worth of tickets, using a $40 winner, and now I had a ten-dollar bill back with my tickets.

"Uh. This can't be right." I looked down at my tickets, and saw that instead of the $30 Golden Ticket, that little gal had given me a $20 ticket called the $4 Million Spectacular. It's not spectacular for me. I don't win on it. I rarely buy one. I certainly didn't want THIS one. It was not in my plan. "Oh, you've given me the $4 Million Spectacular. I asked for a Golden Ticket. I knew I shouldn't be getting any change back." I pushed the ticket and the ten back across to her. She looked at me like I had two heads. And she wanted to chop both of them off.

I've had this little gal before, and while she's not exactly rude, she seems put out when I cash in a winner. Or even when I take in cash to buy one. It's not rocket science. She's not infirm. All she has to do is take two steps, pull on a ticket from the case that sits right up on the counter, and tear it off. She doesn't even have to bend over to get one near the floor, like that poor old lady clerk at the Waterside Mart.

It's not my fault that this is part of her job duties, or that she wasn't paying attention to what she was doing. I asked for a specific ticket, I paid, and I wanted what I asked for. Let the record show that Mrs. Hillbilly Mom does not mumble. With 28 years of teaching under her ever-tightening belt, she has learned to enunciate clearly, at a decibel level calibrated to be heard, yet not assault the eardrum.

The more...ahem...mature clerks there are all quite pleasant and accommodating. I think perhaps this little gal just has a case of The Millennials, her being about the same generation as the #1 Son. They're so put-upon, you know. What she needs to do is start herself a blog to complain about things that do not suit her.

Let the record show that my ticket was exchanged, and that the one I wanted and eventually received was a $30 winner.