"It's your Family Fare Neighborhood!"

I get grumpy sometimes in the mornings after I work. Here's a story. Once every couple months the Church I work at does a can drive to raise money for the youth mission trip. This past week we had a lot of cans. A few things happened and I needed to get the cans out of the church right away. So, I went and got them one day after work. I didn't really want to go get them. But I did. So I had a lot of cans in the back of the van that Jodi's parents gave to us.

Sunday morning I had a hour to kill before church so I decided to return the cans at the 68th street Family Fare. There were less than 5 people in the whole store. I took two shopping carts in and had the can station to myself. If you know me well, you know that i hate being dirty. This effects a number of things in my life from changing diapers, to playing football in high school, to backpacking, to showering, to toiletry behaviors (I use wet-wipes). So, getting my hands in dirty nasty sticky beer cans is not a fun thing to do for me. In fact, I hate it!

I did cans for about 40 minutes. I had a system down. Jodi can attest, that I can always find the best and most efficient way to do things. Or, she can attest to the fact that I always think I have the most efficient way of doing things. Part of this efficiency is not having the pop can machine beeping at you when you need to have it operational. The bottles take the longest. So it needs to be working if the system is going to work. You get it.

The FF folks did not get that I had a system and that it was essential for me to be able to work this system to keep my mind off the germs on my hands and shirt sleeves. So they lolly-gagged their way over to be helpful. This happened three times.

I had like $47 that I ran through the machines. I still have more cans in my van. But I made me way to the checkout to cash in. I was gonna buy doughnuts, but since FF employees took so long to stop the beeping, my system got hi-jacked and I no longer had time for the said doughnuts or hot chocolate I needed for youth group that night. (note: the doughnuts and hot chocolate was a part of a larger system that had been set up in my mind to make things run smoothly on a busy Sunday). So I just needed to cash in my slips and get out of there. I waited for at least 3 minutes for somebody to show up and scan my slips. I could see them hustling off to sweep or clean or whatever, but it was pretty clear to me that can-man was not on the top of their priorities. Finally a woman showed up. She was old. She walked past me without looking at me. She grabbed my slips and started scanning. This was fine I thought. No time for chit-chat. She's working her system. I wasn't really in the mood for talking anyways. My hands were dirty and I was tired. But then she says without ever having even looked at me, "You know there is a $25 limit on these?". Now I was pissed. Damn the system. I explained to her in an assertive way that I was disappointed that she hadn't even acknowledged me and this was the first thing she had said. She smiled. Then I explained to her that the law was clearly in my favor on this. I read an article this summer in the Press stating that stores may not limit how many cans are returned. She said she doesn't make the rules.

I can understand having a can limit if things are busy. Nobody wants to wait around to do their cans if they have like 10 cans but there is some yahoo with three shopping carts of cans a bottles. This makes sense. But she wanted to follow the rules because she was lazy. She was inconvenienced by me. She needed to switch the cans and then needed to stop what she was doing to help me.

The morale of the story is, the next time I buy a case of beer, I will inform the store that my policy is to only pay a $1.00 deposit per trip. If they don't like it, I'll just say, "Sorry, I don't make the rules". This may be misleading since I will in fact be the one who has made the rule, but that's beside the point.

Also, I have been trying to figure out how to say this: "I couldn't care less". I think a lot of people say "I could care less". "I could care less" could mean a lot of different levels of caring. The only thing it rules out is the fact that it is not on the extreme level of not caring. It may mean you care a great deal or that you care a moderate amount. This is why the expression needs to be "I couldn't care less". This means, "I care so little, that there is no possible way for me to be less caring". Be careful when you use this phrase. It's tricky.