A few weeks ago, in the interest of saving money, Gene and I hit upon the idea of doing the grocery shopping at Super Target. It worked out really well, we saved a little money, and of course, as a red-blooded middle class American woman I am required to tithe weekly at Target anyway.
On a previous trip, we were asked if we wanted to sign up for the Target debit card so we would save 5%. Of course we wanted to sign up!! But we needed a voided check from our bank account.
But, we bank at an internet only bank that does not offer actual paper checks. We get around this with a ‘check’ printed from their website that includes our account number and routing number. So today we headed to Super Target armed with this ‘check’. We did all of our grocery shopping (we do a menu and grocery list every Friday night so we’re ready to go on Saturday morning) and hit the checkout.
I gave the clerk our ‘check’ and he looked at it like it was covered in bees. The clerk calls over another clerk, who decides that the ‘check’ needs to be cut out of the 8.5×11 piece of paper. A few minutes pass and she finally makes her way back with our ‘check’ in her hand. They run it through the check scanner thing and it gets crumpled. They decide that the regular piece of paper is too thin so they try to feed it through with another small piece of paper behind it…and it gets stuck.
We tell them that we will just pay with our regular (non-Target) debit card, so I swipe my card. The clerk’s register is still asking “How much is the check for?” More time passes as the brain trust at Target tries to figure this out. The ‘check’ is still jammed somewhere in the bowels of the register, BTW (it may well still be in there now – identity theft, ahoy!). They determine that the only answer is to start. all. over. (We easily had 50 separate items in our cart, all of which had been scanned and bagged).
Gene and I look at each other. “Do you want to go to Cheesecake City Grocery Store?” he asks.
“Yeah, I do,” I reply, expecting Target to snap to attention that they are now losing out on our business and immediately come up with a better solution than ringing up our order a second time. I thought that a manager might even chase after us as we walked out to the car.
Instead…well, Target, forget you and your debit card and your wide array of stuff. I’m out. I will no longer be tithing at your house of retail worship.