the kindness of strangers

[fox]

I'm back in my office one day a week these days, for Reasons (mostly having to do with the fact that because there's nothing about my job that can't be done remotely, there's actually no reason they should pay DC money for a job that can ostensibly be done by a 10-point veteran in an inland state unless one "requirement" of my job is periodic attendance in our actual building in Our Nation's Capital), which is always a fun time getting out of the house in the morning now that I'm absolutely more accustomed to the three-minute daily commute. This morning I had time for coffee but not breakfast, but no problem, I thought, I'll stop in the grocery store and get eggs and bacon off the breakfast bar like I used to to sometimes in the Before, it'll be great.

I got to the actual cash register with the hot bar box in my hand before I realized that I'd left my wallet in my other bag, the one that's big enough to hold my music folder, after I got back from rehearsal Monday night. Curses. Off I go to the customer service counter, where I ask the nice lady if I can give her my credit card details so she can put them in manually. Alas, this store doesn't allow that; they used to, but they got too many bad transactions, is probably why they put a stop to that. Oh!, I say, I remember that for Reasons (mostly having to do with a local pizza place changing its affiliated online delivery app), I now have Apple Pay. No good; this store doesn't take Apple Pay. Uh, I say. What can I—here's my frequent shopper card, is there any way that number can be linked to an account and I can pay that way? Nope, I have no card and no cash and am about to have no breakfast, not that this is a complete disaster—there's a Starbucks across the corner where I can indeed order and pay with my phone—but I don't want to waste the food, and also, ugh, how stupid I feel.

Finally the nice lady at the customer service desk offers to pay for this herself and have me pay her back via CashApp. (!) I don't have CashApp, but she doesn't have Venmo or PayPal or any of the other such things, so I download CashApp, which is taking forever because the wireless reception inside the store is wretched. So she says go ahead and come back to square up later when I've got the app set up. (!!) She draws my attention to the customer service number on the receipt, where I can tell Corporate how helpful she was. I confirm that it is indeed okay to tell Corporate how what she did that was helpful was basically let me leave the store with food I hadn't paid for (because she'd advanced me the money herself), and she said it was, so I promised to do this.

I note that the whole time we've been talking, there's a binder on her Customer Service counter open to a page of training about How to Spot a Flim-Flam. And I mean I assure her that I am not trying to get away with anything here, but at the same time, she has no actual basis on which to believe me. And off I go.

So at lunchtime I go back to that store, and she's gone for the day. The nice lady doing Customer Service at this point says she's happy to put the money I owe her in an envelope where she can get it tomorrow; when I say I was going to have to do it electronically she offers to give me the first nice lady's number so we can get our CashApp accounts sorted out. (!!!) I say maybe it would be better if she contacted the first nice lady herself, because if I were her and got a text from me I'd ignore the hell out of it, a complete stranger texting me in the middle of the day after I'm off work, are you kidding me? So she texts her friend to say "A customer is here who says she owes you money from this morning, can I give her your number?" Sure enough the first nice lady says "Can you get it from her and I'll get it from you tomorrow?" as I expected she might. So now I'm trying to CashApp the second nice lady, and CashApp doesn't want to hear it—I've linked my bank account but because I can't give it my debit card details, I guess it's not ready to let me zap money around? I text Himself to ask him to send me photos of my debit card, which he does, and it is expired, so I can't even enter the details in CashApp (it won't allow me to enter an expiry date in the past, nor should it). UGH. Fortunately, the second nice lady also has Zelle, which I have and use all the time! So there in the terrible reception, I Zelle her more money than I owe the first nice lady, and I wait until she gets the alert that she has money incoming, and I thank her probably embarrassingly profusely, and off I go to get lunch somewhere I can pay with my phone.

And then of course when I get back to my desk I go on the corporate website and fill in a Contact Us form praising both of them to the SKIES for their absolutely unnecessary help that I had no right to expect. I hope they both get bonuses for it.