Hidemi's Rambling No.346

I found a steel shelf on sale at an online store for $10 off, for which I had been looking for some time. Its physical store was near my home and I had gift certificates that would give me 30% off to shop there. Adding up the discounts, the shelf would be the lowest price of the market. My strategy to get it for that price was ordering it online and paying with the gift certificates at the physical store. The middle-aged clerk who took care of my payment at the store wore a name tag that said he was a store manager. But he didn’t know the way to take the gift certificates for the online order and began to grapple with a cash register. He was trying hard for 15 minutes but just couldn’t do it. I gave up too, and decided unwillingly to pay with my credit card instead of the gift certificates since the $10-off for an online order still stood. Then, much to my surprise, he now couldn’t find the way to handle a credit card for the online order. He called a young salesclerk who immediately logged in the computer, retrieved some sort of a code number and nimbly made it available on a cash register to be paid with not only a credit card but also the gift certificates. While we have many choices for our actions as technology advances, it’s not easy to keep up with it. The store manager would be in a mess again if he didn’t learn from the young clerk how to handle a computer and a cash register for an online order. Because now that I know how to get the lowest price, I will shop in the same way soon…