The past couple days I've felt kind of weird when it came to my appetite. On the one hand I felt hungry throughout the day. On the other hand I didn't think I was hungry enough to pull out my wallet and spend money I keep bitching I don't have.
Wednesday, in part because the latter half of my lunch break was ruined by the monthly weather emergency horn test, I decided to get chili from the eatery right across the street from work. I still have this thing where I am reluctant to use cash for only one expenditure a day; I would rather either not spend anything at all or use a credit card. But since I've also been bitching about how high my credit card bills are, I've started to relax the "must use cash for at least two things per day" rule I had for myself, such as with the chili.
Thursday I was ready to do it again. I was going to check out new TVs at the mall closest to me (oh, my TV broke! Now I remember what I wanted to blog about; maybe I'll talk about this soon), and I had thought about grabbing a quick bite to eat. But where? Dairy Queen? Orange Julius?
But then I remembered that there is this new Pepperoni Pretzel at Auntie Anne's, and I had wanted to try it. Even better, I remembered that I have a frequent eater's card with Auntie Anne's. Do stores and restaurants still even use punch cards? I actually have two of them from Auntie Anne's, one from the one at the mall closest to me, and one at ... well, I don't really remember. It's been that long ago, at least a decade, when I first got them. I don't eat Auntie Anne's a lot, but I still have the punch cards in my wallet whenever I get the urge to (most of the time) get a Pretzel Dog. Those are damn good.
I rummaged through my wallet to take out the punch cards. Sure enough, I earned a free pretzel on the card I got at the mall closest to me had. I earned it a long time, probably years, ago, but I'm one of the folks who would rather pay for a pretzel and only use a free one when I really, really need to use it -- for example, when I want to eat something out of the house but not use any money that day. I could have saved it for, say, weekend lunch instead of an hour before I would eat dinner at home, but hey, I was in a weird mood and I hadn't eaten all day, might as well use it.
So I give the Auntie Anne's lady (and she is a lady, not one of the young girls who usually work there) my punch card and ask if I could use it for the Pepperoni Pretzel. She says yes ... and then says that they don't take nor use punch cards anymore. She asks if I have a smartphone, then tells me that if I sign up electronically for their new frequent eater's card, I can get a free pretzel right away.
Sounds good. But then she tells me she's going to take -- well, actually confiscate and destroy the card I gently handed over to her. And the only thing I could think of is, "Hey, you stole my card!" But it's such a helpless feeling, you know? I understand that she told me I could immediately get a free pretzel for signing up through my smartphone when I would have to, if I remember correctly, get that card punched four more times. But first of all, I'm not going to sign up because that means I'll get loads of fucking junk texts and e-mails from Auntie Anne's when I don't need more junk in my life, plus I'll be given a Quick Response code on my smartphone that I'll have to show when I get that free pretzel, and I don't know how to do that quite yet. I'm not a member anymore, basically.
But looking back on it, I can't feel as if this card was stolen from me. I innocently gave her my card to cash in on a free pretzel I had earned. I had no idea that it would be taken from me, and yet it's now in the trash. It had been in my wallet, and before that my old wallet, basically a part of my life, for at least -- at least -- a decade. Sure, I didn't think of it most of the time, but it was still there. And now it's gone, over a random, simply act of redeeming a pretzel. And I was blown away by this turn of events I could not foresee. All I could do was stare blankly at her and half-smile when she intimated that signing up online would give me a free pretzel faster, say thank you, and walk away, an important piece of paper taken from me, never to be seen, never to be in my wallets, never to be with me, ever again.
That bitch is a thief. She should be fired. And I want my punch card back. There, I said it.
---
By the way, the Pepperoni Pretzel is OK, although it would have been better if it would have been a lot warmer and therefore better if it hadn't been sitting under the display case/heat lamp for what tasted like hours. Oh, and here's a commercial for it. Thought this pretzel was new, but it turns out this was first launched in the summer of 2009. This advertisement isn't what you would call professional, but the amateurish nature of it is quite appealing, in fact.
No comments:
Post a Comment