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

[Teague, Julie Anna]

I'd have been mortified, had I been Cindy.  She needs to get flowers...from Home Depot, from you, from somebody! 

Julie Anna Teague | Programmer & Data Analyst | Bloomington Assessment and Research
Indiana University | Carmichael Center 201 | 530 E. Kirkwood Avenue | Bloomington  IN   47408


-----Original Message-----
From: TheBanyanTree [mailto:thebanyantree-bounces at lists.remsset.com] On Behalf Of Dale Parish
Sent: Sunday, August 21, 2016 11:47 PM
To: Banyan Tree
Subject: TheBanyanTree: 2016 Drying Grass Moon - How old, again?

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



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Dale M. Parish
628 Parish RD
Orange TX 77632-0264