Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder: Now a Communicable Disease!

This story is proof that I am, in fact, a better person than many of the outlandishly hideous rednecks that crawl in from the boondocks bog.

We sell puzzles at our store. The standard puzzle price is 50 cents. A nicer puzzle might be $1. A whole dollar, people. We were understaffed today, since one of our regular cashiers is out sick, and we usually run on a skeleton crew on Sundays anyway, so I'd taken over a second register to help with the burgeoning line of restive shoppers. A woman cut through the line to stand beside my register, tapping me on the shoulder as I was in the middle of ringing up someone else's purchase. Her hair was an unfortunate dirty mop color, an effect not helped by its total lack of sheveled-ness, and her teeth looked like they hadn't seen the right side of a toothbrush since some time before the Carter administration. She began her spiel immediately.

"Now, I been jipped by Goodwill before. I bought puzzles than ain't had all their pieces in 'em. You bring these three puzzles down to fifty cents and I'll buy 'em."

I'm attempting to fold the other customer's clothing and tell them their total at the same time.

"I'm sorry ma'am. Unless a product is seriously defective and that defect wasn't taken into consideration during pricing--like a rocking chair with a rocker that shattered on the sales floor--we really can't price down once an item's been placed out here."

"Well that's ridiculous. I been cheated by you folks before--I done bought puzzles that had missin' pieces."

"I'm sorry, but as a non-profit operation whose supplies all come from donations, we really can't guarantee that all the puzzles will have their pieces. We take that into consideration when pricing them."

"Then you bring someone out here and count 'em right now."

"I beg your pardon?"

"I want you to count these pieces. If they have all the pieces, I'll buy the puzzles for a dollar each."
I should point out here that each puzzle had 2,000 pieces.  Right, sorry.  That's why we keep the obsessive-compulsive orphans in the back.  An extra sugar cube for Timmy today!

"We're running on a skeleton crew today. The only employee we might have free would be our hardgoods pricer, but he needs to be at the back door to take in donations."

Long story short, she became irate, demanded to speak with a manager, became nonplussed when she found out she WAS speaking to the manager. I called up Terry, our hardgoods pricer, just to reiterate what I was saying. He agreed with me, of course, though not without her claiming that times were too hard to spend that kind of money on something we're probably going to cheat her with.

That's where it really starts to get to me. We're talking a difference of 50 cents. Two quarters. I might be sympathetic were she buying clothing, particularly children's clothing, or perhaps even kitchen supplies or furniture. I have difficulty, however, believing that her need for the scattered pieces of some picture of a lighthouse, tiger cubs, or, heaven forbid, a Thomas Kinkade cottage, is so utmost, so fiery a scorching desire in her veins, that when her budget is tight enough to make two quarters a fighting issue she must forsake all other purchases and BATTLE TO THE DEATH.

Moreover, the belief that we here at Goodwill are so crafty, so insidious in our machinations, that we would open every single puzzle and remove 1-3 pieces, just so that you might experience the existential angst that comes with parting with one whole dollar for a puzzle in which the butterfly's left antennae is missing a jigsaw shape in the upper left hand corner, is hilarious in its paranoia.



Though true.

(Kidding.)

She and her taciturn husband eventually stalk off, and later return with only the one $0.50 puzzle, which they purchase. As they're heading out the door, I finish printing their receipt and ask them if they'd like it. The husband says yes and takes it, but almost instantly his wife reaches over and snatches it out of his hand with a withered claw.

"THIS IS USELESS!"

She wads it up in her fist and flings it at my face, where it bounces off my nose and hits the floor just as they exit.

Thank you for reminding me of how awesome I am compared to the rest of humanity.