The manager found his way downstairs after five minutes, having relieved himself in the rest room. He heard his page, but there was nothing he could do while on the bowl. He approached the cashier who had wet-red eyes with everyone else sniffling. She said she needed a void before she could give the old man his sixty-nine cents back. The manager patted around his suit-top pockets and then did the same to the pockets of his pants, searching for his keys to unlock the register draw.
Once again Dennis sighed and began to laugh a little caused by the delirium of waiting so long. The manager continued to putter around his pockets in search of his keys, when he remembered he left them upstairs, he said, “Excuse me for a moment while I run upstairs and get me keys.”
The stories continued while everyone listened, except of course Dennis, who stood prisoner between the old man and the long line behind him.
Five minutes had passed while the manager was still upstairs looking for his keys. He searched and searched everywhere for them, but they were nowhere to be found. Suddenly the manager remembered that he placed them on the bathroom stall coat hanger, when he sat down to do his business. So he went into the lavatory and snatched the keys off the hanger.
When the manager had arrived back down stairs, the old man was still prattling on about life’s adversities, and of how no one ever gave him a red cent.
The manager finally unlocked the register draw. The girl then handed the old man back his change, sixty-nine cents to be exact. His face drew a smile, but from all the excitement tied in with his exhausting speeches, he reached for his heart as he and all his change fell to the floor.
Dennis wanted to cuss, but the man could have just died in front of him, lying on the floor. The old man whispered to the crowd that he needed his angina medication which was in the glove compartment of his vehicle, license plate number FB307, a blue sedan. Dennis quickly grabbed the old man’s keys from his pocket and ran out to the parking lot to find the car to retrieve his medication. The cashier had called 911, to summon an ambulance. Ten minutes had passed, when finally Dennis came running in with the old man’s prescription of heart medication and shortly after the ambulance arrived, rushing in with a gurney.
They placed the old man on the gurney and transported him to the hospital. If his medication was given to him a moment later, he might have died on the market floor. Dennis wiped his forehead free of sweat, knowing finally it was his turn to check-out of the super-market line.
Just then the cashier started counting her bills while wrapping them and placing them in a money-bag. She then started counting her change, one quarter at a time, then dimes and so forth. Dennis said rather furiously, “What are you doing! I’ve been waiting for over an hour to check out of this line!” He almost swore, but didn’t, seeing that he was naturally well-mannered.
The cashier responded agitated, “My shift is over! I had to wait as long as you! So stop your crying!” She counted every last penny that was in her draw while a new cashier came with another draw in her hand to work the second shift.
By now Dennis’s frozen goods were dripping heavily from the shopping-cart. The cashier standing behind him at register #6 noticed the puddle so she asked her bagger to please mop up the potential slipping hazard. When he came back with the mop and bucket everyone had to step back, including Dennis, so he could mop up the puddle.
The new cashier was unfortunately, well, new. She didn’t know how to log in her work-code into the computer to operate the register. The manger had to be paged once again to show her the proper way.
Meanwhile, the ambulance took off while its siren wailed. The manager a few minutes later logged the new cashier into her work station. He then said to Dennis and the folks behind him, “Thank you for waiting folks.”
Dennis Carlucci pinched himself, just to make sure he was not dreaming. After all the waiting he could not believe his items were being processed over the scanner. The cashier continued ringing while she couldn’t place them fast enough behind her before Dennis had grabbed the items practically out of her hands, as he bagged them himself. He lastly said he didn’t want the ice-cream, as she placed it aside. She politely said, “That will be forty-seven dollars and twenty-nine cents please.” Dennis took the money from his wallet and fanned it in front of everyone, sorting through his hundreds in hopes to find a fifty dollar bill. In result of not finding one he placed a one-hundred dollar bill in the cashier’s hand. She placed it on the register-front, while the manager walked back upstairs after having noticed the large stash of cash Dennis was carrying in his wallet. The cashier paused for a moment, noticing the spool of receipt paper in the register had run out. She said to Dennis it would only take a moment to change it...
His happy face once again tensed with ire. He knew she was new on the job, so with understanding he held in his anger. She took her time, trembling a bit, confused over what she was doing. She bent down in search of a spool beneath the register, in one of three drawers. She went through the first drawer not having found a thing.
Dennis said aggravated, “I don’t care about my receipt! Please, just give me my change!”
Her blithe face had grown defensive. The seventeen year old girl said with a strong but rosy voice, “I can’t give you your change without a receipt! So you’ll have to wait! My boss said make sure every customer gets a receipt, and that’s what I’m going to do! I could lose my job!”
Dennis explained to the girl who wore a blue button on her work apron, with her name written in marker centered in the middle, “I think your boss meant out of courtesy, Stephanie.”
She replied. “Ut, uh. I have to do what he says ‘cause I could lose my job. And I have a new car, and I have to make the payments.”
Dennis thought to ask for the manager but he had gone back upstairs and Dennis knew it would probably take even longer to contact him than it would to wait for her to install the spool of receipt paper. So he waited. She searched every draw after noticing a spool of paper was right below the conveyer-belt counter all along. She picked the roll up and removed the end of the paper stuck to the roll by glue. She then fed the paper into the tape slot, and noticed some paper was stuck in the slot from the last roll which was in there.
Dennis cringed, and was about to say, “Keep the #$*&^!% change!” But the store had made him wait already seventy-five minutes and counting, and he’d be damned if he let them keep the fifty-three dollars after waiting so long. So he waited. He waited while she tried plucking the stuck paper out of the register with her long glossy-pink finger nails. Dennis tapped his fingers on the counter, in short fidgety strokes while sighing.
After several minutes of her tinkering with the register she freed the paper from the mechanisms, at the cost of breaking one of her finger nails. She shrilled and viewed the back of her hand with her arm spread, wrangling on about how long it took her to grow them.
With all due respect, Dennis felt sympathy for the young lady, but he wanted to get home to eat. This gridlock had cut into his supper time, and his belly was starting to rumble.
After about a minute of trying, the young lady properly inserted the roll of receipt paper. The edginess in Dennis decreased as she hit the change-key while the register draw extended outward. In the process his one-hundred dollar bill sitting on the register floated to the floor caused from the draft of the register draw opening so quickly. Dennis once again sighed, almost breaking into laughter while she bent for the bill, when then her contacts fell out. She said loudly, “Oh, no! I lost my contacts!”
Dennis almost swung at the nearest thing, but held in his rage because he knew the young lady could not see. He looked to his side and noticed the line had dissolved, due to the manager opening the two other registers early. Dennis demanded his change. The cashier said she’d have to page the manager upstairs because she could not see well enough to give him the correct change. Aggravated beyond words Dennis reached into the register draw and pulled out fifty-two dollars and seventy-one cents which was the exact change back from his hundred dollar bill.
From a two way mirror in the upstairs office, the manager quickly called the police after having seen Dennis help himself to some money in the register draw. And he wondered why Melissa was not at her register while she was in fact there, but in a kneeling position searching for her contact lenses.
Within minutes the police arrived, before Dennis could even leave the market. The manager pointed and yelled, “That’s him!”
They apprehended Dennis as he tried shaking the two officers off him, while they held tighter the more he did. They slapped cuffs on him and walked him out to their police car, before he could explain what had happened. Dennis cussed in a state of heavy aggravation all because he was so kind to say, “Please, go ahead” to a helpless looking old man who was standing in line behind him. He swore the next time he should think to say, “Please, go ahead,” to anyone, he’ll think twice, three times or more.
The police arrested Dennis for stealing money from the cash register. Melissa the cashier never saw what really happened, due to her foggy vision and was too involved with the loss of her lenses to comprehend what was going on.
Back at the station, Dennis had in his wallet his paycheck which he had cashed earlier today, which was close to seven hundred dollars all in large bills. Five-hundred of it was returned to the store manager after he stated there was five-hundred dollars missing from the cash register draw. The manager lied because he needed the extra money to pay his mortgage. He took advantage of Dennis, having set him up, earlier having slipped into his own pocket from the register draw five-hundred dollars, having noticed Dennis fan his money out earlier when the cashier had tallied his bill.
So remember, the moral of this story is: “No good deed goes unpunished.”
