Insanity

There's an oft-repeated quote that is attributed to Albert Einstein that says, "Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results."

I experienced a bit of that this morning.

Typically I enjoy going to costco, grocery shopping and other errands without my children since they are now all old enough to attend school, but today I had to go to the store to get a "few" items. Unfortunately a must-get item (dishwasher soap) was forgotten. I'll need to go back but I'm putting that off.

I had a fairly peaceful time at Walmart but then realized I needed to go to the grocery store, so we ventured there as well. This was a mistake. Ironically, it wasn't my kids that drove me crazy; it was the checkout.

Since the lines were long, I decided to do the self check out thing. Usually I have minimal problems, but of course, since I had three kids with me, I had problems! Lots of them!

It started when one of my items was very light and did not seem to register that I put it in a bag, so I was prompted to put the item in the bag. I already had. So, eventually it says "ASSISTANCE NEEDED" and wouldn't let me do anything else. The attendant was with someone else, and a few minutes later, without an attendant assisting me, it started working again. But this time it wouldn't register that I put anything in the bagging area. So after every scan, I had to wait until I could touch the "skip bagging" button. This added a bit of time and was frustrating to me but at least i was working.

Here's where the insanity begins, If you thought going anywhere with 3 kids was insane, I might agree with you but this was way worse!

All of the sudden it started to work correctly without me having to hit the "skip bagging" button. But then it got confused. I put an item in the area but it did not register for it and asked to put the item in the area. Ummm.... I already had, so I took it out. Then it prompted me to replace the item in the bagging area. Compliant, and hoping to just get out of there, I did and was told by the electronic voice to remove item from bagging area. So I did and.... you guessed it! It prompted me to replace the item. I did this perhaps 6 times, getting more frustrated by the minute.

I have no idea what changed to fix it; no attendant seemed to notice or address the issue. Not even a hello, which was probably a good thing because I may have had steam coming out of my ears.

Finally, I paid, collected my receipt and my kids and left.

Why is it that mundane, every day things can be so annoying?