Only Me?

Only Me?

Am I the only one who thinks that merchants watch what I buy and then discontinue the items? When I had a Walmart card and would go to their website it showed all my purchases using their card. Then all of a sudden they stopped carrying my favorite salsas, mustards and books. The same was true at Sams. There my favorite candy, tea, chicken broth, protein bars and cargo pants suddenly vanished. When Sams put in a gas station nearest to me, they didn’t include diesel fuel yet the Sams 30 miles away carries diesel. Of course the reason they don’t carry diesel is because I have a Ford F-250 diesel pickup. The Sams far away carries the Greek yogurt I like but not the Sams closest to me. 

I ditched my Walmart card knowing that now they can no longer follow my purchases. I still use my Sams card because of Sams cash and hope that they will still carry the toilet paper, paper towels and bottled water that I buy. I also have a home at the family farm in Georgia. There we use bottled water exclusively. Of course the Sams in Macon does not carry the gallon jugs of water that we use at the farm. So I have to buy them at the Sams in Knoxville and take them down to the farm. I know that if I stop buying the water, that they will start carrying it in Macon. The same is true at Kroger where I use their credit card. They send me coupons for the things I buy. I use them. But they stopped carrying my yogurt, the chocolate peanut clusters, discontinued my cereal, hot sauce and their tasting bar stopped carrying the beer I like.

Also why is it that virtually every time I walk into a store and go to the register, the computers go down? It got so bad at my doctor’s office that the receptionist used to joke (I think) that they knew when I was coming to my appointment because the computers would crash. Speaking of which, aren’t you glad that Bill Gates was not an airline engineer? 

At the grocery store, they always either run out of tape when I get to the register or all my tapes have that red stripe on them indicating that they are about to run out. Naturally, the person in front of me always has an item that won’t scan or has only one credit card and it keeps getting rejected. I’ve gotten to the point where I just apologize to the cashier because of the problems that I cause when I walk up to the register.

I also have this thing with elevators. When I walk into the elevator bank, more often than not the elevators open and no one comes out. This used to bother me but now I expect it. Its like the elevators are saying “Hi HB.” However, the one thing that always bothers me is that if I am at the elevators and a (white) woman is walking toward them, she will either not get on the elevator with me or will walk up the stairs. I don’t think that I have ever looked particularly threatening, even when I used to ride my motorcycle to work wearing full leathers. Actually, my other half told me my leather pants were what attracted her to me. I find it hard to believe that a woman feels safer in a stairwell than in an elevator with me. 

But I am used to stuff happening to me. Its gotten to the point where I expect it. Once my youngest granddaughter said shaking her head “only you Granddad, only you.” Case in point is that we were in a skybox at a Georgia football game and she was talking with a vice president of a large sports retailer. I chastised him saying that I went on their website looking for a fitted cap with the new Georgia bulldog logo and none was to be found. He then opened up a box that he had brought in to give to the athletic director and pulled out a prototype of the exact cap and said “Can you wear a 7 ½?” It was my exact size. My granddaughter said “only you Granddad, only you.”