Pennies hold the world together

This morning I was able to see a leaky piece of PVC which feeds the washer. One touch and it went to shit, quick. Because of the manner in which our house is / was built, the only viable option was to shut off the main.

My girl was headed out the door so it was not a complete catastrophe - BUT, and I cannot stress this enough - it was a pain in the ass. A Gluteus nuisance, if you will. This meant I had to go to one of those home improvement centers.

Here in LA that means pack a lunch, or buy one from the trailer in the parking lot.

All I needed was a PVC elbow, one small piece of polyvinyl chloride which incidentally cost 38 cents. After waiting in the self check out line for what seemed like ever, the ONE guy I will call Gilligan, assigned to assist 4 "self check out" stations couldn't make the UPC code reader read the UPC code on my 38 cent elbow any better than I could.

Then, in what had to be no less than 2 foreign languages mixed in with what sounded like Yiddish he asked for help, over the intercom. All 4 stations come to a screeching halt for 38 cents.

I'm like, "hey dude, I have a dollar in cold cash I will give you for this elbow. It only cost 38 cents". He looked at me like I was going to bolt for the door. Seriously, Gilligan actually stepped into my direct line to the door, where an unarmed security guard was mowing down his breakfast burrito seated on a makeshift bar stool.

I upped my offer to 3 bucks but Gilligan wasn't having it, so I waited.

Finally, what looked to be a 14 year old kid comes over and turns a key, pushes some buttons and voila, I see the .38 on the screen. Then the 14 year old boss goes to walk off when Gilligan asked to go on his break, to which the boss replied "when you get done with this customer".

AAAAAGGGGGGGHHHHHHHH - I owned Gilligan. His time was now MINE to waste. So I did what any self respecting, pissed off adolescent would do. I put my bills away and fed the self pay machine in pennies, making sure to drop some on the floor more than once.

Of course I didn't have 38 pennies, but I had 18 of them. Gilligan was a shade of red somewhere between Santa Claus and my next door neighbors house (she just had painted last week).

10 minutes or so later I pushed by Gilligan and left, my PVC nugget in hand.

Maybe next time Gilligan will take the time to consider a bribe???