Bullseye!

Today at Target I realized that I really need to donate money to the public school system. The woman in front of me had to be about thirty and the clerk was probably in her mid twenties. After ringing up the woman's stuff, the clerk gives her the total, $107.00. The woman whips out her checkbook and asks, "How do you write out $107?" The clerk instructs her to, "Write the words 'one hundred' then beside it write the number 100 and a slash mark, then put a seven underneath it."

For those of you playing at home that's "100 and 100/7 dollars."

So the clerk puts the check in the machine and then tells the woman that it was declined. The two then brainstorm on why the check didn't go through. Now my first thought is that the woman probably bounced checks here before and they flagged her account number, but I could be wrong. It seems most likely because I don't think they run balance checks through that machine. It's not a credit card after all, but hey, what do I know?

The lady tells the clerk, "Maybe it's because I got that game!" So the girl voids the video game. I'm thinking, "Is this like an food stamp check?" I know that with food stamps you can't buy alcohol, but I'm certain that they don't issue food stamp checks. So they try again and it doesn't work. Then they have a stroke of brilliance... "You think that maybe the machine can't read my handwriting?"

At this point I'm dying laughing inside, but I maintain my composure. The customer says, "Usually when my checks don't go through, a little thing prints out telling me why." BINGO! You have a history of writing bad checks, that's why the thing isn't going through. They eventually call over the manager, who tells the woman to call the 800 number on the back of her check. The lady says that she doesn't have a cell phone and that her phone at home is cut off and asks to use their phone. They shut down the line as the clerk walks with her to the customer service area to use the phone. I ask her if she's coming back and she says, "You might want to go to another register."

Pissed off, I just walked out the store and left everything there. The moral of the story is... A mind is a terrible thing to waste.