Crazy Christmas Shopping for DOC

I ventured out into St. Louis last night for some Christmas shopping. Not for my family mind you, because I still don't know where that money is going to come from...

First, we went to Sam's Club. They do not suck, except that it is Christmas season and they should understand that everyone and their brother will want something from the locked cabinet at the Member's Services area. Hire more cashier's for crying out loud!! We spent about $650 dollars for the employee christmas party next Saturday. (I'll have better stories then, promise!)

Then we headed over to Borders and Best Buy, spent a whopping total of about 13 minutes in each store buying gift cards (paid for with a corporate check). No problem there, and the checkers were still actually cheerful (I don't know how.)

We headed off to Shnucks (THEY SUCK!!!!!) with the best of intentions, and hit what we thought was the motherload. You can buy any damn kind of gift card you want. We added up what was spent so far, and discovered we still had another $1700 to spend. Yippee!! Right? Nope! After gathering around $550 worth of gift cards, the cashier watches me right out a check, screw it up and start over. As I am starting over, he comes out of his comatose state to say "You can't do that!" What, I said? He says "You have to pay for those gift cards with cash!!" Seriously????? You watched me f*ck up the first check and now write the next one, and waited until I was almost done to say no??? What the hell is your problem?

Those were the thoughts running through my brain, what I actually said was "cancel it!" and walked out of the store.

Finally, we made our last stop at Wal-Mart (Telecheck sucks!!). We gather $1,242.00 worth of merchandise and head to the cashier. After the cashier almost dumped our digital picture frame in the floor, I was ready for a drink. We again write a check on the corporate account, only to have it declined. Then, the manager decides to get stupid with me. After I almost raised my voice at her, I called Telecheck to discover (as I thought) that there is nothing wrong with our checking account, telecheck just doesn't want us to spend any more money on Saturday night. So, we decided to split the bill and try to write another check. That worked, go figure! Then we tried to buy the second round of merchandise, again no joy. I could understand Telecheck being this nutty if the items were written on a personal check, but they were not!!! There is over $15,000.00 in that account. I haven't spent it all year, let me spend it for crying out loud!!!

So, friendly internets... anyone else have any crazy Christmas shopping stories? And, for those interested, no we don't have a damn credit card, this might have all been easier with that!