Not Lost in Translation, Just Going Around in Circles

This morning as I was checking out at our local supermarket (emergency milk run), the cashier asked me if I had a bonus card. At least, I think he asked me if I had a bonus card. I mean to say, in this area of the country, when a person is at the point in the grocery-buying transaction when all of the food items and paraphernalia (gum, candy, In Touch magazine, the very last Diet Coke w/Lime in the checkout fridge, what have you) have been scooted along the belt and beeped through the scanner, this is when the consumer is asked if she has a bonus card. It’s imperative to the process. Everyone knows this.

So when the nice old man with a thick– oh, I’m going to go out on a limb and call it Asian– accent (I didn’t take the time to ask him the specifics of his ancestry, me just buying milk and all, but I’m fairly confident in my assumption) asked me something that sounded like, “Something something blurbidy card?” I replied, “Yes, but I don’t have it with me. Can I just type in my number?” Because that is what we DO at this particular store when we are too disorganized to know where any of those stupid little plastic scanny cards have gone– even though they are made to hang oh-so-conveniently on our keychain– as they have apparently broken off and been lost in the dark recesses of our purse, somewhere alongside a lone breath mint and the coins we can always hear clinking in there but can never find, never to be seen again, so help us God.

And then I stood there. Staring at the number pad. Waiting. But nothing happened.

I looked up.

“Something something blurbidy card?” he asked me again.

I talked more slowly this time. Enunciating. Far be it for me to criticize the listening skills of a fellow human being, especially this early in the morning. Because I’m a giver like that.

“Yes, but I don’t have it with me. Can I just type in my number?” I gestured toward the number pad.

And then I stood there. Again. Staring at the number pad and waiting. Again. But nothing happened. Again.

I looked up. “Um–”

“Something something blurbidy card!”

Well, this was getting embarrassing.

“Okay… yes, I have a card. I. Want. To. Type. In. My. Number.”

He looked at me and frowned. FROWNED! At ME! A CUSTOMER! Who is always RIGHT! It’s the LAW! Or something!

Of all the nerve.

“You have a bonus card?!” he asked me, all sunlight and puppies. But not.

“Yes!” Relief. We were communicating. There was definite communication going on. Incommunicado no more!

He gestured at the number pad with one hand while tapping at the register with the other, and barked out, “Next time you SAY you want to type in number!”

I blinked once. Twice. Then– “I thought I just did.”

A scowl and a loud “hrumph!” were his only reply.