Thursday, November 17, 2011

Black Friday Warning from a Ghostly Friend

This seems like a good time of year to relate this story. Aunt Belle and I, Sis and Belle's daughter, Sammi, always hit the stores on Black Friday, usually starting at midnight. We love the crowds and hunting down bargains, trying to beat others to something we really want. We prepare for days, checking BF sales on the internet, pouring over the newspaper ads, watching tv ads. We plan who will drive, which stores have what we want for ourselves...oh, and of course, for presents for others. <grin> We plan our route carefully, with only a stop for either breakfast or lunch, depending on our tummies.

Two years ago, our route took us to the Kohls store in Rockwall, Texas. For years, I had been wanting a pair of diamond earrings. I told hub about the pair for sale at Kohls, a good deal, for us on our limited budget. He always makes me give him a list of what I want, so he can be sure to get me something I will like. He usually throws in at least one surprise or two, which is neat. Anyway, this year he told me to get those earrings for him to give me. Since hub is on 24/7 oxygen, and drags his portable oxygen around with him, he isn't about to buck those BF crowds. Now, if it's a casino trip, that's a different story. But I digress....

So, we hit Kohls about 9 a.m., well into our tour of stores. The lines were humongous, two of them, all the way to the back of the store. Belle and Sammi found what they wanted and joined those lines. I went straight to the  jewelry counter, and found out that we could pay for stuff there with no wait. So I had the clerk hold a pair of earrings for me, went through the store and found a couple other things I wanted, then collected Belle and Sammi from the line. "We can pay for our stuff at the jewelry counter," I said. "All of us. So come on."

Delighted, they accompanied me to the jewelry counter. Belle was tired, so she decided to go on to the car and let Sammi pay for her items. Sammi and I both paid, and the clerk handed us our bags of goodies. I took about three steps away from the counter.

"You better check in your bag for those earrings," someone said to me.

"Huh?" I said to Sammi. "What did you say."

"I didn't say a word," she replied.

That voice again warned me to look in my bag for those earrings.

"Don't move another step," I told Sammi, then repeated what I'd picked up with my psychic senses. She nodded, since she is used to those sorts of things with her mother and me.

I checked my bag. I took everything out, piled it on the counter, had Sammi look with me. No damn earrings!

Now, I admit, I was tired and short-tempered, but that clerk really got off easy. I could have demanded she be fired. I stormed back to the counter, shoved to the front of the short line there, and said, "What the hell did you do with my earrings? They aren't in my bag!"

Her face got fiery red. "They're not?" she said in an embarrassed voice.

"You know damn well they aren't," I said. "Where are they?"

She dug under a pile of papers on the counter beside the cash register in the back of the jewelry case. Pulled out the earrings and handed them to me. "I must have forgotten to put them in your bag," she said.

"Like hell." I checked them, turned them over to make sure they were the ones I bought by looking at the price, and snarled at her again. "Bitch. You tried to steal them!"

I should have called a manager and turned her in. I know I should have, but I just wanted out of there...with my earrings. I stormed off. I did remember to thank the "friend" who gave me the warning.

I checked Kohls the next time I was in there, and she wasn't there. Could have not been her shift, something. But enough people heard me, including a couple other clerks behind the jewelry counter, one who looked like a manager, that I hope she got her butt fired. She was young, probably late teens, early twenties. The earrings look better on me than her anyway!

So keep an eye on things when you shop this BF. Or anytime, for that matter. It's so easy these days to get ripped off. I'm lucky my paranoramal friends travel with me and keep an eye on things.

Happy Turkey Day to everyone. Hope you have zillions of blessings to count. May your tummies be full and satisfied and your shopping be fun and productive as to saved $$!

T. M.

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