How did THAT end up in the cart?

Good grief, someone just shoot me. Well not REALLY! Put the gun away, it's just a figure of speech, golly.

You see... I went grocery shopping yesterday.

Oh but wait, that's not the whole story. (It never is, in my blogs, hahahah...)

I went grocery shopping on a Sunday afternoon, when everyone and their dog (really!) was at the Super Wal-Mart. Passed a lady with a guide-dog-in-training, so... it really WAS everyone and their dog, hehehe.

Oh but wait, it gets a wee bit worse.

I went grocery shopping on a Sunday afternoon BEFORE I had anything to eat.

Big huge OOOOOOOOOOOPS.

So there I was, resting after the ordeal, and wondering what exactly possessed me when I walked through the deli and the bread sections on an empty stomach. Carb heaven, here we come!

There should be a sign at the end of those aisles that says, "If you haven't eaten in the last four hours, do not enter."

Stuff landed in the cart without me even asking it to hop in! It was almost like shopping with hubby - stuff just mysteriously appeared in the cart. After wandering the Super Wally World for an hour, my feet were saying to my brain "Just take it! It's screaming your name! You want it, really you do!" And the worse inner comment: "There's room in the cart still!"

Did I really need two packages of whole wheat hamburger buns? Well, they WERE on sale. And they'll be used, no doubt... because I loaded up on sliced meats and cheeses too.

Did hubby really need two loaves of nine grain bread for sandwiches, when just one would do? Hey, they were on sale too, such a deal. And he does love his tuna salad.

Did we really need two packages of five-count butter croissants? Not on sale, but they will make absolutely fabulous turkey and swiss sandwiches.

There's a problem with grocery shopping for me though and I'm fully aware of it: if I don't eat, I come back with just about everything we ever needed and THEN some. But on the other side of the coin, if I eat before I go, then I come back with one bag of vegetables and some lettuce. AND NOTHING ELSE! Good grief, we can't live on that for a week!

Now where am I going to put all this STUFF...???

Some Days It Pays To Complain

Okay this is a long one, but worth it. Sit back, relax, grab a cuppa coffee... enjoy.

I don't care what hubby says, some days it pays to complain. He can be as embarrassed if he wants, if I wanna complain, I will. And publicly, too. I'm too old not to, at this point.

Now, I don't mean just complaining for the sake of hearing my own whining, I mean complaining when someone's done something wrong. Like messing up your meal in a restaurant, or telling you they'll have your car ready at such-n-such time and then it's four days later they finally tell you 'oh woops we forgot we had to order that part from Germany!'... ya know... stuff like that. We're all consumers at some point, so if my purchase is whacked out for any reason, there's a right to complain somewhere in there. And I mean I complain nicely, I don't go off half-cocked. If I'm gonna go off, it's fully-cocked.

*cough* *cough* *cough* Don't touch that.*cough* *cough* *cough*

See, it all started innocently. Heck, it always does. Last week, to get hubby outta the house so I could work on my writing, and to make him happy with something to do on his day off, hubby went to Taco Bell. Ooooo I love those Gordita Baja with steak, mm mm mm. Tasty things, they are... when they're made right!

Problem is... what he brought back was a piece of flatbread with just steak and lettuce and a teensy sprinkle of cheese.

Well. Humph. I've had them before, I know what's in them: seasoned ground beef, jalapeño pepper sauce (that stuff is AWESOME), salsa fresca, lettuce, cheese, and since we added steak... carne asada steak. I even looked up their website to verify that's what I'd had before, and compared it to the receipt showing what he'd ordered, AND what he'd paid for were all correct. They'd just screwed up in making the thing, and had skipped most of the ingredients. Ack.

Some days I'm fully passive-aggressive (and this was one), so I figured why complain to them directly by phone when their WEBSITE lets me complain to the head honchos? Soooo I fired off a well-written and stated-clearly complaint, no screaming just stating the facts on when-where-what-how-etc. That was ummm... last Wednesday night I think. Late at night, too, I had to think on it for a while... to complain or not complain, that was the question.

In today's mail - a very, VERY nice apology letter from Taco Bell Corporate, and a coupon for two free items of my choice from the menu. Woohoo! Free lunch, here I come.

Works for me!

Then as I sat here thinking of all the bazillion times I've had something like this occur, I think the absolute best was Arby's:

Quite a few years back, me and a friend had gone to an Arby's that just so happened to have one of the corporate offices NEXT DOOR. And not in a separate building, they shared the SAME front door. You'd think the staff would be ultra-trained at that site, right? Wrong.

I'd asked if the special new ham-n-cheese sandwich on the menu was hot (they don't serve it anymore, not the same way), and it turned out, it was not - it was deli style, but nowhere on the overhead menu or the signs by the cash register did it say that. It even looked hot in the picture, melting cheese and all! And the cashier taking my order told me it was hot, he confirmed it.

When the tray arrived, I said it's wrong, it's supposed to be hot. The employee said no it's not hot, and walked away. Well, that bent me the wrong way.

And so began my life of filing complaints at restaurants.

So I went up to the register with the offending food. THEN... they refused to refund my money because it's what I'd ordered (the previous cashier was on break, what timing). So I walked next door (with the tray). Now this really embarrassed my friend, but I wasn't going to eat cold ham-n-cheese when hot was what I'd paid for and what I'd expected and what my head and stomach and mouth were all prepped for – cold just was not gonna cut it.

Whaddya know, the corporate office was closed for the day. I think it was a Saturday, that's why.

So I grabbed a complaint form, went back to my table, filled out the complaint, stuffed it in the complaint box by the corporate door, along with my receipt and...

...about 2-3 days later got in the mail an envelope with a personal letter apologizing, and the promise that they'd retrain the individuals, AND... a stack (!!!) of free coupons, enough for ohhh a dozen meals and potato cakes, fries, drinks, etc.

Shocked the heck outta me!! All I'd wanted was a refund for 2 small cold ham-n-cheese sandwiches. Did they go over the top? You betcha!! Now that's customer service. Didn't cost them anything in the long run, and it made me an Arby's fan for life, hehehe.

We don't live by that Arby's place anymore, but you bet when we did, I went in there once a week... just to see if I could get them to screw up again. And darn it if I couldn't!! They'd retrained them all very, very, VERY well.

But now... we live near this Taco Bell.

Looks like 'game on' again. *grin*

hot... Hot... HOT!!!

I'll keep this short...

How do those little Totino's pizza rolls get so nuclear hot in the center? They're only in the freakin' over for a few minutes, it's not like they were set on fire or anything.

For that matter, how is it possible that French Bread Pizzas have the hottest cheese on top, so hot that even after sitting out for at least nine-point-five minutes, I can STILL burn away several layers of the roof of my mouth?

Or that cheese sandwich I made last night... it sat out for five-point-two minutes and it torched the inside of my mouth too. Humph. Okay maybe it was only one-point-zero minutes, you caught me, I'm impatient when it comes to cooked food.

You'd think (!!!) after all these years of doing the same stupid thing over and over again that I'd learn, right? No! Where's the fun in that?!

...a short blog because I need some numbing antiseptic for my mouth, LOL!