more normal than not

I saw something nice down in Greenville yesterday.

We were in a toy store on Main St. and a father came in with his young daughter and started talking to the cashier.

“My son bought a bat and ball….but somehow we didn’t end up paying for all this other stuff.”

That’s kind of confusing when someone comes back to pay.

I’m sure that the cashier gets questioned about stuff that was paid for more often than she runs into someone wanting to pay more.

The father, in front of his young daughter, who was with him, figured out what hadn’t been paid for….and took care of the discrepancy.

People are quick to jump on things that work against them….if they’ve overpaid, they rush to fix the problem.

It was nice to see someone working to fix a situation that worked against someone else’s business.

It was good that I didn’t see him dancing on the street after getting all that free stuff, waving his receipt and yelling, “SCORE!!!”

His honesty wasn’t a “grand gesture”, either.

It was just a quiet thing that the father did.

It was the “right thing” to do….and he did it quietly and efficiently.

When he left, I told him that I thought it was a good thing for his kids to be able to see him do that.

That was a good thing….what that good Daddy did.

All this stuff….all these lessons that we try to teach our children…..we try so hard to “educate”….and it’s the quiet things on the edges of our lives that I have a feeling they’re going to internalize and remember.

It’s the kindness or honest moment that we don’t even pay attention to while we’re (hopefully) doing it that they’re keeping track of.

I better mind my “P’s and Q’s”.

How about this?

All these dudes dressed in furs….screwing around in the snow.

That’s pretty wild.

And….how the heck did they get film of all this stuff?

I thought it was all supposed to have happened before they were making documentaries…..like, many….many…years ago.

It did have a line in it that I’m sure I’ll be able to use at some point in my future…..”May my childhood necklace keep your breath alive.”

I guess that’s pretty universal though….who hasn’t had an opportunity to say that?

Maybe I have too much time on my hands….sitting in the dark, trying to be quiet so that I don’t wake everybody up, typing “full movie” into the YouTube search bar?

Awwww, what the heck? I don’t have that much time on my hands that I can sit through this movie about these old cavemen guys.

I can’t waste my time like that.

I should spend it more constructively….like watching a good movie early in the morning.

Maybe a classic?

Like “Soul Plane”…. on Netflix?

Holy Smokes, though…that caveman movie has enough good quotes to last a lifetime.

Those Neanderthals really knew how to dish out a one-liner.

My friend John mentioned going to see this guy a while back.

Glenn Phillips….from Atlanta….been there forever.

I remember seeing him play somewhere in downtown Atlanta….and that Anne Richmond Boston of the Swimming Pool Q’s played on the same bill with him.

This would have been about the era we would have gone to see him….in the 80’s.

I don’t remember ever dressing like that, though.

I don’t remember wearing little blue shorts.

(Who am I kidding? That’s what I ran in….little blue shorts….)

When John mentioned this show, I realized that most of the fun things I’ve done in my life….or, at least, a lot of the fun things that I’ve done, have been at the prompting of my friends.

Man….it would have been pretty boring if I didn’t have interesting friends.

I guess that sometimes I’m A TAGALONG.

That’s OK.

Whatever works.

Maybe I should grow my hair out like Glenn’s hair?

That’s about what my hair-line looks like now.

Too many male hormones, I guess.

Too much muy macho to keep the hair on top of my head.

Here’s a more recent performance.

I think you’ll see that even 30 years later, Glenn Phillips has stayed pretty true to his vision.

His hair stayed the same, too.

Glenn Phillip’s website

“No….we can’t help you here. What you’re going to need to do is go up to the kitchen area and get them to pull a part number for you so we can look up your order. You don’t have your receipt, right?”

“No….we kept our receipts but all the writing faded off….”

“Well….you’re going to have to go upstairs…”

So I took off for the upstairs part of the cavernous Ikea store….going against the flow of traffic because it cut off about 1/2 a mile or so from the trip.

When I got upstairs, the salesperson tried to look up our order…but when she couldn’t find that, she was able to track down a part number for me.

I took the part number back down to customer service….and she said she couldn’t help me.

“You don’t have your receipt? We can’t do anything for you without a receipt. Here’s an 800 number you can call…maybe they can look up your order number and email you a copy of your receipt.”

“I don’t have a phone that will do that…”

“You don’t have a phone that will take an email? What kind of a….”

So I went to find my family so I could call from my daughter’s phone.

After spending about 15 minutes on the phone with a different customer service representative, she said she’d send 4 new hinges out for me free of charge ( the soft close hinges on our Akurum cabinets had suddenly turned into slam close hinges and I was worried that we’d break the glass paneled door when it pounded shut).

After I thanked this helpful representative,and before we said goodby, she told me, “I don’t know why they didn’t just call from customer service for you. They could have done that, you know….”

Gaaaaaaaaaaaaaa…..I felt like my head would explode.

I’d spent most of the afternoon being sent to different areas of the store….only to find out that the problem was fixable without a ten mile Ikea walkabout.

This is the short version. I don’t feel like writing the whole horrible experience out in great detail.

I don’t want to hold on so tightly to a bad memory.

Anyway….OK….first, I don’t know what all that stuff is called….all those Swedish things….and second, they don’t know what all that crap that I can’t remember what it’s called is or where or when I might have found it in the giant Ikea store.

And it’s a pain in the rear to fight these crowds and walk all over that giant store trying to fix something that I found out should have been easily handled by the first person I talked to.

And what’s with all this crappy fading writing on the receipts?

The customer service manager told me that “most people make a copy of their receipts”.

Aggggghhhhhh.

Freaking Ikea.

It’s a torture to go to Ikea.

It makes my head feel like it’s going to explode.

We’ll go back….I’m sure of it….and I’ll repeat this battle and live to shop another day.

Freaking Ikea.

“Ikea” Jonathan Coulton