Scott Adams, creator of the Dilbert comic strip, uses the phrase in-duh-vidual to describe folks that are very, very dense. Tonight I think I met the person he was thinking of when he coined that phrase.
I just got back from my second trip to the Bi-Lo in town. Earlier today, I went out to get milk, and that’s where I went. You see, Bi-Lo has this new deal where if you have one of their bonus card thingies, and you buy six gallons of milk, you get a seventh for free. This is a nice thing for us, since we drink around 4 gallons of milk a week.
Well, I left without getting the two coupons they are supposed to print out for every gallon of milk you buy. I’m relatively sure that the printer was out of paper, since the coupons print out automatically, and the cashier handed me a receipt, but didn’t hand me any coupons. I wasn’t thinking, I didn’t ask about them. However, when I got home, Rachel did ask about them, and I realized the error of my ways.
So, after eating, I went back … and asked the manager about ‘em. He looks at my receipt and proclaims that the reason I didn’t get the coupons is because I didn’t have my bonus card scanned. Of course, I know that the guy scanned my card … especially since the bottom of my receipt has something like “Thank you, Bonus Card Customer … you have saved $xx.xx this year …” printed on it.
So I point this out to him, and he informs me that it is just telling me how much I’ve saved so far this year. At this point I remarked that it was funny that the computer knew I was a bonus card customer if I didn’t scan my bonus card, and inquired as to how he thought it knew that without the use of the bonus card.
At this point there was a pregnant pause, as I watched my point go way, way, way over his head.
Not having learned my lesson from the earlier attempt, I decided to be a little more direct, so I asked him to explain how the computer knew that I was a bonus card customer, and further knew how much I had saved so far this year if I had not used the bonus card, since that was the only way the computer could possibly identify me, especially since I had paid in cash. I thought that perhaps my mentioning that there was no way for the computer system to identify me without the card, he would see my point. I was wrong.
At that point he just got flustered and told me he was going to give me the coupons. I thought he might have conceded the point, but I quickly discovered that he had not. When I was walking away and he told me to be sure that I used my bonus card next time to avoid this problem.
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