Staff Appreciation Night Preparation Craziness

(I'll have a blog about the weekend later.)

One of the girls in the Compassion DTS, Emily, decided to have an appreciation night for the staff. She created groups to help her organize it. I volunteered for the food prep group. Today she said she needed someone with a Costco card, so I raised my hand and joined in on the Costco run today at 5:00.

There were 8 of us walking into Costco with one card. A bunch of people were nervous that that wouldn't work (that they'd stop us and say a large group can't walk in with one card). I said that'd be ridiculous. We walked in just fine without a second glance. Sweet.

Two of the girls wanted to take advantage of the Costco run and get personal food in addition to the event's food. I saw no problem with that. I just scan my Costco card before each of them goes, and then they pay with their card. I wasn't sure that you could pay with a different person's card, in which case, I would just pay and be paid back. But again, there were a few in the group that didn't think it'd be allowed for one member card to be scanned three times, which I found a ridiculous idea. And so they suggested schemes of throwing everything into one batch and subtracting the personal goods from the cost and dividing the remainder among the supporters. There were a few people suggesting schemes, and whenever that happens, I pretty much always stay out of it, to not further contribute to the cacophony. It went on for long enough that I took the two girls through the lines and scanned my member card for them, so that I could show the others that it could be done, and then we'd simply pay for the group things with the communal money.

And it almost completely worked, except with one problem. The lady behind the counter was personally offended that I was taking advantage of my membership powers. Perhaps she felt I was cheating the system. If I were breaking a rule, or if she at least thought or felt I was breaking a rule, then that would have been understandable. But this was different. She started out perfectly fairly, informing me that I would not be entitled to a third receipt for the third purchase, motioning to the receipt that had just been printed out for the second purchase. So I ask, "K. I can still do a separate purchase, right?" "Yes." Wonderful. I take the second receipt out of the machine and hand it to the second girl, Lauren. The lady sees the receipt no longer there and then asks me if I took it out of the machine. I say, "I'm sorry, I thought you gestured for me to take it." She said nothing, but she appeared very annoyed with me. She then starts running the last group of food, for the event. Emily waits at the register to pay. I forget who got handed the third receipt, but we were all surprised to be handed a third receipt since we didn't pay. I see that the card number on the receipt was the same number as on the second receipt. She had charged the $100.34 of food for the staff appreciation night to Lauren's card. We hand Lauren the cash to make up for it, but she started freaking out because her account didn't have much money and she is living month to month.

We know Walmart has a money transfer service, so I hop out of the truck with Lauren and Emily (who needs more personal food). I wait with Lauren in line, and for at least ten minutes, the guy in front of us is returning a handful of items, one transaction at a time. (I don't know if this is relevant, but one of my roommates used to steal things from Target and then return them to Walmart because of Walmart's lax return policy; he said it was really easy.) At this point, I remember I was approaching the time for a phone date, but just then, we get called to the counter and we ask if they can transfer money into an account or deposit checks, and no, they cannot. They can transfer money between people but not into accounts, and they can cash welfare/government checks but not personal checks; Walmart knows its key demographic/customers. Lauren will have to mail the cash to her mom for her mom to deposit, because her bank does not have a branch in Hawaii. She said her mom probably wouldn't deposit anything for her until she gets the cash in the mail, which is sad.

So we check out of Walmart, and while we had been in line at customer service counter, the truck driver had texted me to say take the Walmart shuttle back so he wouldn't have to come back, cause shuttle vans come every 20 minutes anyway. We walk outside and there's 5 YWAMers waiting for the shuttle, including a CommTrans person who wanted to tell me how hilarious my jokes were last week at the open mic night. Also as we're walking outside, we see an empty YWAM shuttle driving away from those 5 people that are waving at the van. They all expect the van to turn left for another loop to actually pick up people, but it didn't. It just drove away. Ha! Did it think we were waving goodbye?

So we wait and talk. Ten minutes later, another van shows up. I wish Lydia a good night and hop into the van.

It's really good I was in on all this, because I feel I did a pretty good job of making the crew laugh as our plans went through the blender. Crazy night. :-D