Sunday, August 17, 2008

What is the world coming to?

Two funny incidents stand out in our recent trip across the country that make one wonder what the world is coming to.

One night we were forced to stay in a hotel due to an unfortunate combination of bison and rain. We took one of the three vacant hotel rooms left in the entire city of Cody, Wyoming at a place that tried not very hard to be posh and upscale, The Cody. When checking out in the morning, I had the following conversation.
"Hi, I'd like to check out. Room one-sixteen." I said this hoping that they hadn't noticed that we had kept a dog in the room.
The hotel clerk, different from the one the night before clickety-clacked on her keyboard and said, "Okay, you're all set."
She hadn't offered me a receipt. "Thanks. Could I have a copy of the receipt?" She nodded and there was a pause while she did something with the computer hidden away beneath the reception desk. I continued, "We're moving across the country for work, so this hotel stay will be tax deductible."
She was just about to hand me the receipt when I said that; my comment stopped her. She peered at the receipt and said, "Oh. Ah think they added tax to this."

The other thing that happened was also in Wyoming. We bought groceries at Woody's Grocery in Newcastle, WY. The scanning of bar codes by the teenaged clerk proceeded as per usual until she came to a couple grapefruits. She put the grapefruits on the scale, punched a numeric code into the computer, and the monitor came up with oranges. I said, "Those aren't oranges." She fumbled with the computer for a moment, voided the oranges line, and turned to the bagger, another teenager, and asked, "What are these?"

What is the world coming to?

3 comments:

slartibartfast said...

A world of pale, large, yellow oranges.

Next question please.

slartibartfast said...

Oranges that run check out stands, that is.

Miss Bee said...

IQ's below triple digits for all!