Commissaries, Children and Candles! Oh my!

Hi again! It's me your favorite blogger. Even if I'm not lie to me please. It's good for my ego. So I'm writing this post thinking about my hectic day and how quickly your day can go from such crap to simply amazing in such a short amount of time.

I started my day off by dropping Caylee off at preschool just like normal. Since we started the reward program 2 days ago, Caylee has miraculously remembered how she wrote her name by herself before and mornings are pretty much a breeze. That takes a load of frustration off of me...for now at least. We'll see if the reward program will keep her attention long enough or if she's only going along with it so that she can hold out for a bigger reward somewhere in the not so distant future. Let's hope this works for awhile, although the possibilities of hubby and I going broke raising her are pretty good odds these days. She's out little diva!

Fast forward about an hour. I've dropped Caylee off, and I'm now in the check-out at our local commissary. Notice I changed friendly to local as our commissary workers are anything but friendly. I'm in line and the cashier asks me if I want paper or plastic. Such a decision, but I think I'll go with plastic. His next question was whether or not I needed help out to my car with my groceries. I looked him right in the eye and said, "no thank you. Please just put the groceries in my cart, and I'll manage" in my most friendly voice.

Clearly he took that all wrong because the next thing I know, the bagger has all of my groceries loaded up in his niftly little cart ready to take them to my car for me. Any other time I would welcome this, but not at the Commissary. For those of you who aren't familiar with the workings of a government run / owned Commissary let me enlighten you. First of all, they pay cashiers to be there, but make the baggers work for tips. I don't have a problem tipping someone for helping me, but I don't feel as though I should be made to feel like a cheap ass for only giving a few bucks for their help. So I paid for my groceries and asked the cashier to kindly give me a $5 bill and 5, $1 bills so that I could tip my bagger. In my haste to catch the bagger who was now following someone else to their car with my groceries, I quickly grabbed the cash, thanked the cashier and ran out the door. When I got to my car, I quickly helped the bagger unload his nifty cart and proceeded to give him his tip when I noticed that the cashier had given me two, $5 bills. What the hell was I supposed to do now?

So I quickly thanked the bagger for his help, although I certainly didn't ask for it and hurried to the driver side of my car. I was going to pass on the tip this time and more than likely pay double if I ever received his help again. I was totally embarrassed by my lack of patience with the cashier in not making sure that I was given the correct change.

Well let me tell you, the embarrassment didn't last long. In fact, it quickly turned into anger, and lots of it as the bagger didn't walk away and accept the fact that I was not going to give him a tip today. Instead, he looked me straight in the eye, which is what I was trying to avoid in the first place and says, "what no tip for me?" I told him that the cashier hadn't given me the correct amount of change and that I was totally embarrassed about not being able to give him a tip. Afterall, no one in their right mind tips the bagger $5 for breaking your eggs and crushing your bread. He then looked at me and says, "you can just give me the $5 in your hand. That would be okay with me." I kind of chuckled, but soon realized that he was no where near kidding with me and was moving closer to me with every passing second. Finally, I gave in and gave him the $5 bill because I was getting nervous. After that, I quickly got in my car and drove away.
So I'll say it again, "I'm not responsible for paying the baggers at the Commissary. If the want a job that pays them well...go get one. Clearly working for the government is not so much working for them."

After my Commissary debacle, I decided that we needed a little break. So I picked Caylee up from school and we went to play at the park with the rest of her school friends. She had a blast as always, and I got to have adult conversation. Okay, I couldn't wait to tell my friends what had happened to me at the Commissary. That's pretty much what it boils down to. If Caylee got some exercise out of it too, well then that's great!

After a few hours at the park, we packed it up and went on home. I needed to get ready for my Scentsy show tonight and Caylee needed a nap...in a bad way. Okay, so did I. As we walked in the door from the park Caylee looks at me and says, "Mommy, sometimes I can secretly be a little naive." I looked at my child in amazement. I have NEVER said this to her, but I had to laugh a little as she didn't even know what it means. After my laugh (it sounded so cute coming out of her mouth) I started to think, who the hell thinks it's okay to tell my child this? What about childhood and her innocense. I'm not ready to throw her to the wolves in the real world (or my neighborhood) yet. This is one thing I'll be discussing with her teacher tomorrow.

I continued to get ready for my Scentsy show while I played what she said back and forth in my head. I still couldn't believe it. So I got myself ready and took Caylee next door to play with the neighbor until hubby could pick her up after class. When I got home, she greeted me with "Hi mommy! How was your Scentsy show? Did you make lots of money and smell lots of good candles? I hope you didn't have any naive customers." Tomorrow I think we'll be working on what the word naive means.

Until next time....