Do bizarre and unlikely things ever happen to you? They seem to happen to me all the time. So much so, that people constantly say things like, “That could only happen to you” or “Sounds like an Amy White story to me.” Statements like this make me feel like I am unique in this phenomenon, but surely, I cannot be alone. Who out there identifies with me? Is it possible that some of us are just more prone to finding ourselves in odd scenarios? Do some people have strange body chemistries that attract unusual situations? Do we naturally put out vibes that say, “Hey Weird Stuff, happen to me please.” Who knows?
Let me give you an example of what I am talking about.
Last week, I was in the grocery store. I went through the self-checkout lane because no lanes with an actual employee were open. If you can’t tell from my tone, I despise being forced into the self-checkout lane if I have more than one or two things. Quite frankly, I am not a good cashier, and my lack of training is usually apparent. Yes, I realize self-checkout lanes are designed to be easy-to-use and feature things like pictures of all the fruit in the store in case you have no idea what you are buying, touch screens, and credit card tap technology my one-year-old grandson knows how to use, but alas, something always goes wrong.
I am notorious for forgetting to take my cash back out of the machine and having it stolen by the next person (Grrr), scanning the same product twice, or having trouble with the produce scale weighing my bananas correctly. I also often have a bottle of wine or a six-pack of beer in my cart. All of these scenarios mean I will require professional help, even though I am supposed to be checking myself out without encountering a paid employee. I am the person with the blinking red light above my head indicating I have either screwed up somehow or I am trying to purchase something that requires the approval of the seventeen-year-old employee on duty.
I often wonder if they can program the machine to read millions of upc codes, why can’t they program it to recognize wrinkles, gray hair, and the use of outdated language like “Geez, Louise” and “For the Love of Betsy” which I am usually grumbling because something is going wrong? All of these should be automatic indicators that I am old enough for a bottle of Moscato. Self-checkout rarely saves me time. Let this blog serve as a public apology to all the people who have ever or will ever stand behind me in line.
Anyway, back to last week—by a stroke of luck or possibly divine intervention, I did not have any problems checking out. I functioned as a competent cashier and bagger without issue. I was feeling proud of myself. . . until it came time to pay. I was looking for my credit card in my wallet (because of course I lost my debit card earlier in the week and am still waiting for the replacement to come in the mail). In the process of searching, my driver’s license catapulted out of the secure slot in my wallet. It shot out like Houdini being fired out of a flaming cannon. It plunged down toward the glass scanner area with the speed of Secretariat in the 1973 Kentucky Derby. . . and wedged itself vertically in the one-sixteenth of an inch space between the glass and the metal casing that holds the scanning mechanisms necessary for shoppers to become their own cashiers.
I stared down at it with a look of, “Are you kidding me?” but then immediately thought, “Of course this would happen to me.” I tried to channel my inner snake charmer and will the license to rise up like a cobra so I could grab it, but this did not work. I could see it as plain as the nose on my face but could not figure out how to get it out. I had to call for reinforcements. My flawlessly executed checkout now required a real-life employee to assist me.
The young man who had so diligently been doing his job (which was to watch all the customers and make sure they were doing their unpaid work as cashiers and baggers correctly) sauntered over. When he saw my predicament, he decided the best option was to immediately try to grab the license with his fingers which were the size of large sausages. He went after it with the confidence of a lying politician and the grace of a bull in a China shop. Of course, he pushed it down even further. Who could have ever guessed that would happen? Now it was necessary to call two more employees over to help, forcing them out of their very important observatory posts.
They were all very polite and really did want to help me. None of them had ever seen something like this happen before. Of course they hadn’t. They felt it necessary to repeat this fact multiple times. Each one of them attempted to take the machine apart as much as possible. One sweet girl even retrieved tweezers from the hygiene aisle and opened the package so we could try to use them to grasp my license, but of course they were too big to fit into the microscopic space my license had wedged itself firmly into.
As I stood there watching the heroic rescue efforts, the line of disgruntled customers grew steadily behind me. I felt like a mother of an insolent preschooler who was pleading for her child to come down from the top of the indoor playground at McDonald’s. Just like the child who firmly plants himself at the highest point of the play structure after climbing up the mile long maze of kid-sized tunnels, my license would not budge.
I finally had to admit defeat. The license won. It shall forever call the scanning machine on aisle seven home. I thanked the employees repeatedly and apologized profusely to the people in the line behind me. There was nothing else to do but gather my groceries and abandon my license. I then drove home illegally and got online to order a replacement license for ten dollars plus fees. Sigh.
Things like this happen to me on a daily basis. They honestly don’t surprise me anymore and they rarely ruffle my feathers. This is just life. These are first world problems. No sense in getting angry because it won’t change anything. I’ve learned to laugh at stuff like this and always expect the unexpected.
Tell me about something unlikely that happened to you in the comments below. Chances are, if it happened to you, it happened to me too!
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