"Ambulating Towards the 'No Service Customer Service'"

Lately, I have had these moments of creative spontaneity. Well, maybe it's just gas, but that's a whole 'nother subject.

Today's foray into the infantile concerns my going to the grocery store FOR SOMEONE ELSE! A challenging proposition. Because the person you're buying for has a set agenda and requirements/specifications, and you ain't gonna win, no matter how hard you try. When you shop for yourself it's easy, but when you're shopping for someone else it's caveat emptor time. In this particular case, the person in question is my mother. Legendary, she is, in her quest for the perfect edibles.

So I was armed with my list, er, specs and I'm looking for Colavita olive oil. I see Pompeian, and Bertoli and even Crisco. It's like anything else; there's all different flavors. Just like with Cheerios and Coke. Now there's chocolate, yogurt, apple cinnamon, honey nut, fruity, and berry burst cheerios. Coke now comes in vanilla, cherry, one calorie, with lime, with lemon, zero, raspberry et al.

And olive oil. There's original, garlic-flavored, banana, fruity, ripe fruity, etc.-too many to list. Almost forgot the one endorsed by Mussolini-olive oil vintage World War II which has been aging for over 65 years.

So for $14.00 American money-not sure how many euros or pesos that is-I can buy a quart-sized jar-the Colavita brand. Because it's not for me-no problem. Even tho' the person it's for needs a smaller bottle due to age and arthritis. Problem is I couldn't find but one size, which is easy to handle if you're possessed with vim and vigor, but not so if you're 85 years old. Maybe there was a smaller bottle, but because it was nestled in between the truffle lemon, pepper, garlic, basil & the Benito brands of olive oil, I may have overlooked it.

Next on my shopping excursion was an attempt at finding the cherry peppers. My instructions were to buy the mild-not hot-ones, and that they MIGHT be located on the olives, pickles, condiment aisle. Well, I searched the bottles and, of course, couldn't find them, so I headed to customer service.

The lady in charge was nice and asked me "what could I do her for?" Or something like that.

"M'am, I can't find the cherry peppers. I did find the cherry Cheerios and the cherry Coke, and the cherry olive oil, but I can't find the cherry peppers. Can you help me?"

"Cherry peppers? And they come in a jar. Never heard of 'em!"

Because this is the age of computers and everybody does business this way these days, I asked her if she could look them up on the computer.

"Hold on," she said. And picked up the phone to bring in the calvary.

Now we're getting somewhere, I thought.

Instead of the cherry pepper manager, a young man opened the door to my right-her left-and peeked out and the customer service woman asked: "Do we have cherry peppers in a jar, Benito?"

"Cherry peppers? Never heard of 'em. And they come in a jar? Never heard of 'em."

I tried one last time. "Don't you have a computer where you can look it up?" I said.

"I've worked here a long time and have never seen cherry peppers," he said.

Maybe their computer was off line or perhaps it had been diseased by a virus or maybe they still do business the old fashioned way-they earn it-with a pencil, pad and guesswork, but they were not gonna look up cherry peppers on a computer.

So I did what anyone else would do. I said &^%$# it. And realized that what what we had here was a failure to communicate, and another example of "Customer No Service from the supposed Customer Service."

Undeterred I was now on a mission. One last stroll down the aisle of condiments. And there they were. 3 bottles of cherry peppers. Only one kind-sweet. No mint, kumquat, liquorish, herbal, hot...just sweet.

So I placed them in my grocery basket along with the cheese ( ginger sling with a pineapple tart flavored ), and the elberta peach nuanced savoy truffles. And the rice-au-roni hagen daz cheerios and vanilla bean espresso coke.

I was tempted to ambulate back to the customer service area to show them my discovery, but I was exhausted from finding them. So I said %$^& it and headed to the checkout.

The cashier asked if I found everything okay, and if the cherry peppers were tasty.

I told her, yes, I had a little trouble, and, yes, they were quite good but hard to find.

"Never heard of 'em," she said.

I chose plastic and got out of there with a quickness. To live and fight another day, until next time. Maybe if my condition is indeed gas. perhaps some pomegranate
flavored Gas-X is the ticket.