his was broken and they replaced it but, hey--it's new and UNSCRATCHED! We were both hungry and decided once again to try the mexican food. This time, we tried Senor Pepe's in the food court. They told us our total bill and Ben pulled out his VIsa Check Card and this was met
by a (rather rude) "Sorry, cash only." It is with this that I need to go off on a little tangent...
Cash only? Cash only!?? This is completely ridiculous and this bothers me so much! I mean, why cash only? I'll tell you the two reasons I came up with:
1. Cash only means you can lie about how many sales you made at the end of the year and cut your taxes down
2. You don't have to pay the $.50 fee that the credit card companies charge you for each transaction
I can almost understand not wanting to pay so much in taxes. And I can almost see not wanting to pay fifty cents for each transaction at a fast food place because the food is generally cheaper and that could make up a fairly large chunk of your profits. However,
personally, I think it is a poor business decision to make things a pain in the butt for people just to be cheap. If they had a sign that said "We will charge you $.5 extra if you use a credit card" I would almost not be so irritated. Personally, I think this is completely
ridiculous and this all could be due to my frustration at the time (we needed to leave the Apple store because one of the "geniuses" at the "Genius Bar" would not be available for half an hour (venting about that's coming up next). I mean, if the company is too cheap to pay the fifty
cents for the credit card transaction, what do you think they're going to do when there's a sign at the meat market that says "USDA Grade A Beef, $2.00/lb. Imported from Britain, Grade B, two month old Beef, $1.99/lb?" This is exactly the kind of place who would try to buy and re-sell
week old sushi because they bought it half-off. I mean, the place didn't even have one of those "Take a Penny, Give a Penny" trays...They didn't have a "Raise Money for Little Timmy's Cancer Surgery" Either. They probably got in trouble for stealing Little Timmy's Cancer money so Timmy
came and got his jar back from the cheap-o's. Quite honestly, I'm surprised there wasn't a "Tips" jar sitting by the cash register. It all probably wouldn't have bothered me so much if they would have at least smiled sincerely when they said "I am so sorry, but we don't accept cash.
Sorry, but the management's cheap." Or something...anything...
Anyway, after our "Cash Only" dinner, we went back up to the Apple store to visit our Genius who after waiting a half hour or so replaced my iPod. Now, if you work at a "Genius Bar" you are just asking for a lot of skeptical criticism from people like me especially if I am in
a sub-good mood due to a business trying to cheap out on you. So back to this so-called "genius"...the name should be changed to "Geek Bar" as these people are obviously not geniuses! While typically, genius is defined as anyone having an IQ greater than or equal to 140 on a standardized
IQ test (equivalent of being in top 95%), Steve Jobs seems to think that it means "Anybody who can figure out how to use my P.O.S. operating system." Anyway, the geek obviously had no idea how to efficiently do anything and it took him half an hour to check out my iPod and say, "Yep, it's broken.
The click wheel does not work." Of course it's not working!! That's why I brought the iPod in! Do you honestly think that I get up in the morning and say to myself, "Self, we should go to the Apple store with our fully functional iPod and see if it still works when we get there..."?? Or
perhaps there's something I just don't understand as I'm just not smart enough to...
After Ala Moana, we went to Costco to load up on groceries. We found that groceries there are about half the price that they are at Safeway which is half the price of Star Markets! So we "saved" quite a bit but here's the real kicker--we don't have anything to complain about! :)
After all of this, it was time to shave my head (See picture below)...and it's official, people are for sure going to think that I'm in the military now when I give them my out-of-state phone number...oh well...as long as there are no negative consequences that go along with it, I'll be ok. Heck, maybe if they think
I am military and just got back from Operation Iraqi Freedom I'll get some free meals? Or maybe I can get the military discount on stuff without asking...maybe something positive will come out of shaving my head, who knows??
Just remember everybody, making decisions that will effect you for a long time (i.e. shaving your head, getting a tattoo, etc.) should take a long time to make. I know, this seems obvious, but some of us MacOS-illiterate people don't think out the consequences of an action fully...
Happy fathers day everybody,
Ashley & "Seargent" Chan
P.S. If you are curious as to whether or not you should apply to work at the "Genius Bar," you may want to consider this link to take the test!
