Happy First Day of Spring

I was three hours without a phone yesterday and saw more butt cracks in those few hours than I’ve seen in my whole entire life, so wanted to capture the absurdity of it all, but could not because my phone was in transition at the cellphone store.

My S4 had begun giving me trouble last month. Photos were coming out blurry, it didn’t always ring when calls came in, didn’t always notify of messages, and completely died on me twice. I lived with the blurry photos and managed to jiggle the battery to bring the old girl back to life when she died, because I didn’t want to purchase an S8 so close to it being outdated by arrival of the S9.

The S4 held on, the S8 arrived either Friday or Saturday and, not wanting to press my luck any further, off to the cellphone store I went yesterday.

The young lady that assisted me in the purchase started off great.

Off course, she tried to sell me a lot of accessories I didn’t want or need, including a Tablet.

Having researched new phones, I’d been saving and was prepared to pay the three times more than I paid for the S4 outright, but was stunned to be told I could not. That their system doesn’t allow customers to buy the phone outright.

I could finance it, yes. I could put down a sizeable down payment so the monthly bill wouldn’t be too high, but I could not pay it off outright.

I found this difficult to believe. It’s like saying, we don’t take cash, we do credit only.

No other way around it and guaranteed there will be no finance charges, I opted to be billed monthly, but was told I could return in 30 days, and pay it off.

Once the paperwork was out of the way, it should have been a simple matter of transferring data from one phone to another, but she had to first put the S9 on a charger. Saying it would be a little wait, I opted to take care of other errands in the area.

First, I walked over to the craft store, then to the office supply store next door.

Checking out of the office supply store was a lengthy process, because there was a young man holding up the cashier. He had bandages on his arms that looked like he’d just been released from the hospital and he wasn’t acting quite right. He was not wearing those awful saggy pants young boys wear that purposely expose butt cracks, but the pockets of his pants were heavily weighted down to the point where his pants were literally being pulled off his body and he was not wearing underpants.

He was tripping so hard, holding up the line, deciding he wanted to add candy items on the shelf behind him, bending over, picking up bags, pants being pulled down, butt crack to the world, pulling pants back up, bending down again, pants sliding, butt crack to the world, pulling pants back up, us ladies in line trying to look away, obviously embarrassed by what we were seeing.

I came to the conclusion he was on drugs or medication of some kind. Something about his face reminded me of the nephew whose funeral I’d gone to a few months back, my heart felt heavy and instead of being disgusted by what I was seeing, I felt sorry for whatever it was that brought him to this point and began to silently know the truth (pray) for him.

He must have felt something because he turned around, four several pound bags of candy in his arms and asked me, “Is this too much candy? Be honest”.

Yes, I said.

He mumbled some other things as he tried to simultaneously balance the candy, pull his pants up, pull his shirt down, and asked me to choose for him.

I chose the Hershey’s Miniatures.

He wanted to know why.

“Because if you’re going to put all that sugar into your system, the pure chocolates are your best health bet.”

By then, another cashier had arrived, the line was whittling down as his cashier was still waiting to complete his purchase, giving me a “What’s the matter with this guy look” I giving her a “Who knows” look in reply.

He was still mumbling something to the cashier about the candy I’d suggested he purchase as the second cashier checked me out and I was heading out the door.

I hope the kid wasn’t driving. 

Arriving back at the cellphone store, I found the saleswoman with another customer, a male customer wearing Jordan high-tops (what Manoli Blahnik's are to women, Jordan's are to men), bending over her station, butt crack to the world, no sign of underpants.

“Is this a thing now?”, I began thinking to myself.

“Do men not wear underpants nowadays?”

His pants weren’t falling down. It was just that when he bent over, his shirt rode upwards on his body, and his jeans were such that plumber’s crack popped out to say hello, with no sign of underpants.

I kept glancing away, as I waited. And it was a long wait, as I listened to the salesgirl service him in a way I thought flirtatious. She even gave him her business card saying pointedly, “This is me. Call anytime.”

She didn’t give ME her card. Plus, my phone wasn’t ready. She evidently didn’t charge it while I was gone because she tried to do something and it died on her.

Told she had to put it back on the charger, I had time to run another errand, I went grocery shopping, to the bank, and returned to the cellphone store to find her serving other customers – two girls this time.

She wouldn’t break away from that guy she was flirting with, but had no problem, leaving the girls just long enough to give me both phones, say something about wait more.

I waited and waited and waited. Saw an older gentleman come into the store, bend over, again with the plumber’s crack but, being an older gentleman, he did have the decency to flash to where I saw underpants.

I waited so long as the salesgirl chatted and sold to the two women that finally another salesperson approached.

He looked confused as to what I was waiting for, said everything looked fine, but I told him, “She’s not transferred the data yet”.

He looked even more confused as he said, “She hasn’t?”

It was he who transferred the data and familiarized me with the new phone.

When all was said and done, I could have walked out with both the S4 – which I’d sold back to her for $50 and S9, as both were in my possession and the salesgirl was done serving me, I’d become invisible to her.

She must work on commission.

At any rate, I walked the S4 over to her, gave her an exasperated “I’m disappointed in you look” and walked out a full three hours after I first walked in.

She’d better hope I don’t receive a follow-up survey.

When the other salesperson was transferring my data, I sought to confirm the salesgirl had told me correctly that I could not purchase the S9 outright.

He said that was correct and it has something to do with scams.

It still sounds unbelievable to me, and I’d like to know how a company gets scammed on a cash sale when you have a customer's address, telephone number, and the customer still has to pay you monthly for data usage.

Oh well, it is what it is.

Today is Pizza Tuesday. Not sure if I’ll go down to people watch.