Nothing Sweet Comes From Eating A Box of Samoa Cookies

Ok technically not an entire box, but close.

Last Saturday morning, still half asleep, my mind inventoried the previous day’s activities. I put a little joke about it on Facebook ~

FACT: There are 15 Samoas in one box.

Later in the day, moving  kinda sloooow, I went to Target to pick up some kids clothes I had ordered online with in-store pick-up (so I could get a 20% discount). The confirmation email said my things would be waiting at customer service.

44 minutes, 17 frustrated people, and countless eyerolls later, I was engaging my ujjayi breath as I exited the store.

Sparing you the details, the situation boiled down to a mix-up due to the online ordering/store pick-up option and applying the 20% discount.

It was all over $4.

Through the 20/20 lens of hindsight, it’s easy to see how the exchange flowed and why.

I wasn’t about to let a $4 miscalculation go. It’s a lot of money and it was mine! Although, if I think about, in my 1,000+ Target shopping trips, odds are pretty good that a few items have accidentally slipped through checkout uncharged for one reason or another. My guess is the teeter is still tottering in my favor on that equation.

Simultaneously, the young woman in the red shirt wasn’t about to be told she was wrong. I’m making some assumptions, but I can imagine when she debuted her large facial piercing in her cheek, she may have been told she was wrong by one or two people. My guess from her general aura of toughness is that she may have been unfairly (perhaps even heartbreakingly) told she was wrong from a very young age. 

I wanted my money. She wanted to be right. In the end we created a situation that was both poor and wrong.

I got to thinking about the box of Samoa cookies I had eaten the night before – you know, for “dinner”.

It had cost $4. 

I sure wasn’t engaging in any fights over that $4. (Other than fighting off the kids when they tried to eat one. Hudson actually did get a hold of 3 which is how I ended up only eating 12/15 in the box. Damn her.)

Not to mention, I wasn’t feeling my best – physically or emotionally – after the night of cookies and wine. Like I wrote about recently in terms of choosing kindness, my kindness muscle was totally atrophied.

The young Target Teammember may not even remember the incident, but its been bugging the heck out of me. I mean really – how much of the universe’s energy is $4 worth?

Maybe I’ll take her a peace offering next time I go. There’s an unopened box of Thin Mints hidden in the cabinet…