I have a Hy-Vee Grocery Store right by my house that I usually go to for my regular weekly shopping.  However, I do read all the circulars thoroughly and am occasionally enticed into visiting Price Chopper for a bag or two's worth of deals.  It is this habit that has led me to the mistake of visiting the Price Chopper that is the closest physically rather than the closest one on my own side of the state line.  I have had two other annoying experiences at this particular location, both involving some pretty unfriendly cashiers.  This time I had Unfriendly Cashier from Annoying Experience #1, but I decided not to hold that against her.  I greeted her nicely when it was my turn and she seemed okay to start with.  The problem came when I asked questions about what was being rung up.
     First, I was buying toilet paper only because it was on sale.  Everyone knows that paper products are more expensive at the grocery store at regular price; does anyone even buy them there if they're not on sale?!?  Well, it didn't ring up at the sale price, so I asked if that kind wasn't supposed to be on sale.  She just stared at me and said apparently not.  I asked her which kind was supposed to be on sale.  She said, "I don't know.  I haven't been back there tonight."  I was taken aback and took a few moments to ask, "Well, is there anyone close by who might have been back there and would know the answer?"  The kid bagging my groceries offered to go look while the poodle-permed cashier just stared at me with her sourface.  She finished ringing me out and I handed her my coupons.  I watched her scan them.  I watched her miss one.  The display did not allow me to see all of them on the screen at once to double check, so I politely asked if she was certain she got all the coupons.  She just said, "Yes."  She didn't even scroll back to look or anything.  Then the kid came back and said the kind of T.P. that was on sale was sold out.  Sourface Poodle stuttered and muttered something about a raincheck, to which I said we didn't need to worry about.  I could live without the toilet paper sale.
     Now, I had contained my annoyance until she handed me my receipt and I stepped away to look it over.  Sure enough, she had missed the exact coupon that I thought she had missed.  Not that a dollar is that big of a deal.  But everyone who knows me knows that it's the principle of the thing that matters and I will drive an issue into the ground based on principle alone.  So I waited for a break in between her customers so that I could ask her about the coupon that I had given her.  She just stared at me and said she didn't know.  This time I just stared back until she opened up her drawer to look at the coupons.  When she flipped past it, I finally got ticked enough to be unfriendly back.  I said, "There it is.  Now can I have it back so I can take it over to customer service so they can fix it?"  She handed it to me and I am certain she made a very nasty face at the back of my head as I walked away.  Must really suck to be so miserable in your own life that you feel the need to purposefully agitate the people you get paid to help.
     So, Hy-Vee, I think I might have to stop straying from you.  Do you honor competitor's ads like WalMart does? 

CL