TheBanyanTree: 2016 Drying Grass Moon - How old, again?

[Kitty Park]

Great story, Dale.  And I suppose as we read this that the 85 year old lady
continues her meltdown in the appliance department.

I'm sure Cindy's forgiven you (and the "boys") for misjudging her age.  All
fingers should be pointed at Mr. Big Bucks who erred by sending two
"children" to deal with an elderly person.  Customer service?

Kitty
<mzzkitty at gmail.com>kcp-parkplace.blogspot.com
<http://parkplaceohio.com>


On Sun, Aug 21, 2016 at 11:46 PM, Dale Parish <dale.m.parish at gmail.com>
wrote:

> How old, again?
>
> We headed into town from the shop to pick up some tools I’d ordered after
> the last burglary.  Cindy wanted to check in the storage department of Home
> Depot to see if they had some shelving she could use.  I’d ordered the
> replacement tools on-line, and had gotten an email that some of them were
> at the store for pickup, but some others hadn’t arrived yet.  I needed the
> angle grinder that had arrived, but not the band saw and other tools,
> however one of the things that had arrived was a hand truck, and I could
> use that to ferry the whole lot back out to the truck.  I told Cindy that
> I’d be at the Customer Pick Up desk.
>
> Cindy split off to the right for the storage department, and I worked my
> way around a very long line at the Exchange register and went up to the two
> Customer Pickup registers and see that there’s no one at either register,
> although the Exchange register is right beside the Returns register.  I try
> to stand between the two Customer Pickup registers waiting for someone to
> come to service the counter.
>
> After several minutes, a woman comes rushing up behind the Customer Pickup
> register and grabs the phone, and pages a number, “One oh four, call
> two-three, one oh four, call two-three.” She will not look me in the eye,
> as hard as I try to make eye contact.  She holds her finger on the
> hook-switch waiting for one-oh-four to call, and soon he—or she—does.  I
> can’t hear the voice on the other end when she releases the hook switch,
> but urgently, she says, “We have a situation!  There’s an eighty-five year
> old lady in applicances and I’m afraid she’s in trouble.  She wants someone
> to come fix her refrigerator and… “  there’s apparently an interruption
> from one oh four, and she continues, “I explained that to her, but she
> bought a filter from us and tried to install it herself and she says it
> won’t fit, and now her refrigerator won’t work, and she wants…”
>
> One oh four apparently is countering, and she still won’t make eye contact
> with me, but her voice is getting more urgent. “I’m afraid she’s going to
> have an attack—she got all upset and was trying to get help, and started
> crying, and had to sit down, and someone needs to help her out of here, but
> she won’t leave until she thinks she’s going to get some help.”   Short
> pause.  “She’s sitting down – I’m afraid that she can’t get up…”  ….  “She
> looks bad… weak…”  … "Yes, just get someone to talk to her about her
> refrigerator.”  … “That’s why you make the big bucks.”  With that, she
> flipped the hook switch, pressed some buttons and told someone else, “He’s
> sending two boys to talk to her.”
>
> Cindy wanders up about this time, and I explain to her that I still
> haven’t been waited on, trying to catch this lady’s eye.  Cindy steps over
> to the chair in front of the credit application desk and sits down to
> wait.  After her foot surgery last December, she tries to stay off them as
> much as possible.  The lady has stepped back to another phone at the rear
> of the space behind the service registers, but when she finishes her call,
> she reluctantly comes back up to the Customer Pickup desk and asks me if
> she can help me, and I explain to her that I need to pick up some on-line
> orders.  As she starts asking me my name and looking at the computer, out
> of the corner of my eye, I see two young men come up to Cindy sitting in
> the chair to my right, but pay them no attention.  The lady’s called
> another woman from the back to start digging in the cabinets where the
> customer orders are stored.  I am trying to explain to her that I
> understand that the order isn’t complete, but I really only need the angle
> grinder now, but if the hand truck is in, that I will take all the tools
> they have on the order now loaded onto the truck.  Cindy’s still talking to
> the two men in Home Depot aprons, but I ignore this—she talks to anyone
> about anything, and after teaching this long, is always running into
> ex-students.
>
> I’m invited to come behind the counter and inspect the tools on hand, and
> we unbox the hand truck and start loading all the other tools onto it.
> They print out some receipts and have me sign the electronic signature
> forger, stamp COMPLETED on the receipts they’ve printed and Cindy gets up
> from her chair and comes with me to the door, where we push the hand truck
> towards the truck and start loading all the hand tools into the camper.
>
> As we’re loading the tools, she starts to tell me about these strange
> young men who were insistent that she had a refrigerator problem and that
> they could help her with it.  She didn’t know what they were talking about,
> or why they thought she had a refrigerator when she was not in the
> appliance department, and hadn’t told anyone that she had a problem
> refrigerator.
>
> So as we drove back towards the shop, I told her the story about the lady
> who first appeared behind the Customer Pickup register and what I’d
> overheard of her call.
>
> “EIGHTY-FIVE!??!!  They thought I looked EIGHTY-FIVE?!!?”
>
> “Cindy, they’re just kids.  You’re over thirty.”  Sometimes I think I’ll
> never learn when to keep my mouth shut.
>
> Hugs,
> Dale
> —
> Dale M. Parish
> 628 Parish RD
> Orange TX 77632
>
>
>
> --
> Dale M. Parish
> 628 Parish RD
> Orange TX 77632-0264
>
>