Confusion Reigns Supreme!

In case you haven't already gathered this from reading my blog, there are times when I confuse easily. Okay -that's a bit of an understatement, my kids would say (as would a lot of others, I'm sure.)

It is very easy to confuse me, not just a little bit, but to the max! Math can sometimes boggle my mind, depending on what the application being used might be. Economics -in particular micro stuff (as in the most dreadful class ever that I took in college, got a D in it and changed my major because of it) is yet another thing that rattles me -a lot. I had something else in my mind as I was typing that last sentence, but by the time I got to this sentence and went to write about the other thing that confuses me a lot, I had forgotten what it was. (And things like that do a royal number on confusing me too, as you can see.)

Science, formulas, physiology (and remembering body part, their functions, etc) can throw me for a hell of a loop too. I don't know why but I could never get it straight in my mind about diabetes, the pancreas, insulin and that stuff -so lets hope I never develop that disease cause I am quite sure I would go over the edge trying to figure out if I need to eat or drink something to avert a diabetic reaction of some type or other.

Certain forms pertaining to accounting confuse me too. Why, when you use a bank card, do you have to check whether you want the application to be a debit or a credit? Well, I know if I opt for the debit, it will require I use my pin number and I have never made a transaction in all the years I have had my bank card where I had to supply my pin number so if I had to do that now, I'd be screwed cause I don't remember what mine is. I know too if I would use my bank card and could select the debit feature, the transaction would charge me a fee whereas if I select the credit feature, it doesn't charge my account.

What's confusing about those two things to me is that in my mind, if you debit something, you are subtracting and if you credit something, you are adding but in the case of my lovely bank card, both transaction mean subtraction but the debit one means subtract more!

Now if you read my post yesterday, you know that I went Christmas shopping and when I got home, I realized that I had purchased two items - a sweater for Maya and a tee shirt for Kurtis that I had already purchased, oh a month or so back for each of the kids. Yep. Same identical sweater -manufacturer, color, size and with the tee shirt, same color, size and design on the front of it too! I had also purchased two packs of training pants for Kurtis -the cute little ones that are considered, I guess, to be "designer" stuff because the one pack of three are from the movie "Cars" and have Lightning McQueen on them and the other pack are all Spider Man stuff. I also purchased two items -to be gifts for certain family members - that I thought were priced at either $11.99 or $12.99 but somehow, I had ended up getting charged $14.38 for each of those things.

And then, upon checking further on my reciepts, I got really confused because of the way their scanner equipment reads an item and applies discounts too.

So today, Mandy, Kurt and I went back over to Clearfield so I could take the items I had purchased in duplicate and either exchange them for something else or have a credit applied to my charge account and also, to get the price corrected on the other two gift items to reflect $12 something instead of $14.38 each.

As I strolled back to the service desk, I went by the area where they had this huge display of the items I had been overcharged for and saw that the sale price was $12.88. (I hadn't even looked at what the "regular" price on those items is until today when I saw the non-sale price was $32.00 per set. WOW! I sure was glad I had found them at the sale price, ya know cause there is no way in hell I would ever pay $32 for one set of these items!

At the service desk, the clerk came up to assist me and I explained my senility factors had set in and that I had unwittingly purchased two sweaters alike and two tee shirts alike as well and also, my daughter didn't want the training pants I had bought for my grandson, so could I please take care of that? Sure, no problem she had said and I plunked my bag on the counter only to discover I had inadvertently grabbed the bag containing six tee shirts for little boys, intended for a gift program for needy children. RATS! (Actually, I didn't say that. My sailor's vocabulary slipped through when I saw that mistake and I said "Oh Shit! I picked up the wrong darned bag!" Oh well, no big deal as Mandy can bring them over next week and get them exchanged or a credit applied to my charge account. Whatever, ya know.

So I then told the clerk about the two items for which I had been overcharged.

She looked at them, looked at my receipt, dug out their sales flyer and announced to me that those two items were not the items shown in the flyer and that they actually should have been charged to me at $14.38 per pair. Hmmm. Why then I asked, is the this huge display out front with oodles more of these items loaded on there and a sign that says they are $12.88 per pair?

She went out and looked, came back and said yes, the sign does say that but still and all, these items shouldn't be pricing out as $12.88 but rather $14.38.

Excuse me but if that's the case then all those things shouldn't be displayed together with the one sign that says $12.88, should it?

She went and got her supervisor to "handle" me then. They had a little discussion about the price issue there and decided that yes, I could actually get them for the $12.88 price and they would give me a $3.00 credit to my charge account to reflect that correction.

Do you know what they have to do to post a credit like that?

They have to do a refund of the item at the original non-sale price, then, the do a purchase of the item at the original non-sale price and applied not one but three different discounts against the item and it ended up that my price was not $12.88 that I was being charged but rather $8.27 per pair! I like their math, but that was just wrong and I wasn't really there trying to rip the company off -just trying to take advantage of the sale price I had seen advertised and just apply a $3.00 credit to my account then, will you please?

The rest of my confusion over my purchases last night came about because the cashier mentioned to me, since I had a rather large amount of items I was buying, that she could ring up a certain number of them on one slip and if it was over a specific amount (I think it was purchase over $125 and you got $25 off and over $75, you got $15 off) but it couldn't include all your purchases on just one slip -and she'd have to ring up two separate slips. Well, okay now. I'm all for saving $25 sure and if I can save $15 more on top of that, well bring it on, ya know. So that's how she rang up my purchases -two slips with a total discount to me of $40 but $25 on one slip and $15 on the other.

The lady back at the service desk then informed me that that had been handled incorrectly and I wasn't eligible for a $40 discount. Yeah -well, don't bitch at me about what your employee offered to do for me cause I didn't know about that in the first place.

Have you ever tried to interpret these cash register slips and how to figure out what the original price was, then what the sale price to you was and after that, what your "net" price -the bottom line to you, what your are paying -actually is?

Remember, I said at the beginning how I confuse easily well, this whole deal had me totally discombobulated.

Add to that there is yet another area that confuses me quite easily too. And this one is probably one of the most frustrating for me to cope with. If I am talking to someone, trying to explain something and if that person starts bombarding me with questions or just sentences somewhat about the topic at hand or worse yet, about things totally unrelated to where my mind is, I really get lost and I do it at warp speed then too!

And when I am agitated to start with and trying to put on a calm front though, and I utter 5-10 words and then the other person starts saying to me -in rapid speech too -that no, no, this is wrong, this is how it is done. this is this is that, etc., they best look out because it is liable to bring out utterances from me that some folks might consider very offensive (as in blue vocabulary ya know), it will make my voice (which is loud enough usually on a normal basis) get louder, my blood pressure will increase then too, I'm sure, and it will also make me even more strongly convinced that I am right and you are wrong too! Not a good scene, not at all!

Now if in the beginning, she or the other clerk -upon seeing that the items I bought that were "overcharged" to me had supposedly been incorrectly displayed by the sale sign, if she had just said, okay, an error, not your fault, you should have your account credited to the tune of $3.00, I would have accepted that and disappeared. But by first making me feel that I had tried to pull a fast one on them, telling them I bought this and it was really that, ya know, then doing a credit that ended up charging me not the $12.88 for each pair of the sale item but rather $8.27, which was an incorrect price for sure, it wouldn't have made me that much more determined then to show her the error of her way and how she was costing the company $4 more per each item I was purchasing then too!

And that is what made me say to her that seeing this credit transaction -which is incorrect and though it is in my favor and I will take it, it also makes me realize exactly why so many companies are losing money these days!
'
Kind of like the jokes we all have seen, I'm sure, about the people who run cash registers but don't have a clue how to give change unless the machine flat out tells them what the change should be for the bill tendered!

So anyway - that was my day today!

Oh the drama. Oh how I felt like I was going cross-eyed too, looking at those items on the receipt, that small print, this discount, that discount, another discount and getting confused and overwhelmed more and more by the minute!

Now Mandy and I are wondering when she takes the items I purchased in duplicate, by accident (by senility factoring in there, LOL) will they charge my account back by the original price per item, then the current sale price, then take 2-3 discounts on that too, to come up with what figure to credit my account with?

Just wondering. Wouldn't you?

Happy Shopping though!