“No good deed goes unpunished”
I tell my kids that all the time. It seems that’s it’s almost always the case.
In Florida the one night at dinner, the entire clan wanted a picture. Nice. I, having a decent SLR volunteered to take the picture, and since nobody wants an old ugly fat guy in a sea of handsome folks, you get the idea. I takie the pickie, K.
I had a few that were actually pretty decent.
Good idea. I suggested to my Father in law that wouldn’t it be nice if I printed up 30 or so of the pics and send have them at the dinner event on the last night of the affair.
Great idea, and.. a very nice good deed indeed.
Enter the Internets . I uploaded the pics to Wal-Marts one hour processing center and selected the nearest store to where I thought I was, a place called Yulee Florida. Paid the $49.18 charge and approved the transaction. I got me an email back from Wal-Mart in just a few short minutes to notify me that the kind associates in the Yulee store had completed my order and it was available for pickup.
According to the Google Map thing, I should be able to drive to the Yulee Wal-Mart in about 15 minutes. Except… my GPS had no entry for Wal-Mart in Yulee. Portend of things to come.
When I can’t figure out technology I typically engage short term consulting from my middle kid, Red. “Here, program in Yulee Wal-Mart”. He did, so I thought. The girl friend, as my wife calls the disembodied voice of the voluptuous lingerie model who calls out directions in the nude from where ever it is she is, started me on the trip.
She got me off Amelia Island and over to Yulee. We passed a Target and a bunch of very sketchy businesses called Internet Sweepstakes … some kind of gambling loophole I assume.
So up the road I went. The GPS directed me northwards, 10 minutes away. After 15 minutes I was still 10 minutes away- odd. I kept driving North, not evev sure that I was still in Yulee, and then…
Welcome to Georgia!
Turns out I wasn’t even in Florida anymore.
Big u’ie and back south to Yulee FLA. I found my way back to Target and started looking around again, and again and no luck. How frustrated was I? I suppressed every male gene in my body and actually asked directions. Asked a lady righ there in Piggly Wiggly lot. Sho’nuff, “I’m sorry Ma’am, I’m looking for the Wal-Mart”, “Wal-Mart, why it’s just there behind the Piggly Wiggly young man, jus’ rat o’er they’ah yondah”.
Shit.
In Wal-Mart I made my way back to the photo booth. “Sir, you maat wanna take ya’self a little peek at them pictures, they didn’t crop quite raat”. Quite right? It’s a group photo and three people on each side were gone and the fourth on each side- cut in half.
“Sir, you can tak’m back to the customer service counter and get your money back” Yeah.
Or Not.
For the next hour and half I got to enjoy the following discourse
“I need a receipt”
“ bought it on the internet I don’t have a receipt. Oh. That’s a computer thing BTW.”
“Don’t know how much to give ya back?”
“how ‘bout forty-nine dollars and eighteen cents?”
So we divided by 30 and put that number in the register and guess what.. didn’t add up. Pesky sales tax. And, despite their best efforts to do the math.. “Tell you what, just give me a couple Jackson’s and we’ll call it good.”
I finally got $45.00 back and got while the gott’n was good.
But, alas I was unable to complete the original idea for a good deed and get everyone the pictures they wanted. Will try again this weekend.
