I now have proof that the oh-so-charming young man referenced in the original food stamps blues post went out of his way to humiliate and embarrass me in front of other customers for whatever sick reason his tiny little mind could make up.
I went shopping today knowing that I only had around $19.30 left on the EBT card for March.
I was really careful with what I bought, adding things up in my head, using coupons, buying things that were on special, and buying the cheaper store brand of ice cream rather than my usual Breyers or Haagen Dazs.
However, I still managed to come in over what was left on the card by about $1.30 so I said to the checkout person I’m sorry but there isn’t enough left on the card to quite cover that.
She very politely reversed the transactions, told me exactly what was left on the card (the store is provided a printout that tells them this information), and re-applied that amount to what I owed. This process took all of 2 minutes maximum.
Now why did the first person back on October 16, 2009 have to be such a jerk and so rude about the whole process?
He literally had to be shamed in front of the other customers in his checkout line to force him into reversing the transactions and then he had to be forced into applying what was left on the card to what I owed.
It’s obvious from what happened today that they even have a policy covering situations like this. This young man was NOT a new employee 5 months ago, as I’d seen him in the checkout stands for literally years before this incident.
Its obvious that the whole process takes 2 minutes or less to complete. The rude young man back in October took more time than that to try to force me to put the entire balance on my debit card solely because I was inconveniencing him.
I will say that tonight there was nobody behind me in the checkout line, and back in October there were 2 whole people behind me.
Perhaps the rude young man–experienced checker that he supposedly was– just couldn’t cope with a whopping total of THREE whole people in his checkout line, and having his checkout line infinitesimally slowed down by someone who’d never used an EBT card before just was too much for his tiny little brain to handle.
I’m sure that I wasn’t the first person who had ever used an EBT card in his checkout line, I’m also sure that I wasn’t the first person whose total due exceeded what was on their card.
They wouldn’t have a policy in place to handle this if it didn’t happen to people other than me.
They wouldn’t teach their checkers to reverse the transactions and tell the customers what the balance was if I was the only person it ever happened to.
Their systems wouldn’t print out a form with the available balance if the situation only happened to ONE person ever in the history of Safeway!