Bricks and Mortar

I almost never go inside a store anymore - not a physical store anyway. I am one of those people helping to toll the death knell for big box stores and shopping malls. Some people still love to shop in a store. To them I say more power to you, but my first choice is shopping online. 

Graphic by Teece Aronin

Even though I'm a baby boomer, I just cannot imagine walking all over hell's half-acre trying to find one oddly-sized light bulb, just as I can no longer imagine having to answer the phone if I want to know who's calling.

A couple of weeks ago my son, Jon and I had time to kill before an appointment so I said, "Let's run into Target and get toothpaste. Besides, I really have to use the bathroom."

Inside, Jon strolled around while I dashed into the ladies room. There was a female store manager in there looking flustered. 

"I'm afraid you can't use the bathroom right now," she said. "There's been a water main break and the township is shutting off all the water."

"Now or in a few minutes?" I asked. "Because I really do have to use the bathroom."

A woman stepped out from a stall next to us, and the manager leaned to the side and peered in.

"Well, from the looks of things, you can't flush now," she said.

For no amount of money would I have traded places with that woman in the stall with her toilet bowl contents open for inspection.

"Oh, that's not necessarily true," said the woman in the stall. "I was just waiting for instructions before I flush. Should I try it, do you think?"

"Yes, go ahead, " instructed the manager. Both women were talking as if they worked for NASA, and the toilet was a rocket ship in trouble. The woman disappeared back into the stall and we heard a mournful, yowling growl from the toilet, as if a dragon was in there giving birth.

"That's just what I thought," said the manager. "You can't flush."

See now, that's a perfect example. If I was shopping online, I'd just put the laptop down and scamper off to the bathroom, then flush once the water was back on. I would not have to show my toilet contents to anyone else even if they did work for NASA. That's partly because, unlike some people, I know that a toilet is just a toilet and not a rocket ship, no matter how high someone is when they use it. When I shop online, the biggest irritant is the occasional error message because of outdated credit card numbers or passwords - unless I have to call customer service.

"Yes ma'am, it is certainly upsetting when you click to make a purchase and the item fails to appear in your cart. I know I would find that most frustrating." This was no doubt read to me from a script with a blank space for inserting my problem. 

"Well, can you fix the issue?" I ask.

"Ma'am, that depends. Did you click on the word buy or on the picture of the item you wanted to buy?"

"I clicked on the word buy."

"Ma'am, you were supposed to click on the picture."

"That doesn't make any sense. Who clicks on the picture? Besides, the word buy is bold and in italics."

"That's just an idiosyncrasy of the system, ma'am."

"An idiosyncrasy?"

"Yes, ma'am."

"Wouldn't bolding the word buy and putting it in italics be a choice made by a human? How can you say it's an idiosyncrasy in the system?"

"Well, ma'am, because it really just is," said customer service. 

And those last italics were a choice made by this human.

Penny Smells Like Bacon

For the sake of anonymity, I'll call her Penny.

Multitasking Me by Teece Aronin. Available on products at

Redbubble.com/people/phylliswalter in the Colorful 

Mod collection.

Penny is one of my best gal-pals and yesterday morning, she became a shining example of what can happen when we multitask.

Remember a while back when I was talking about how part of being mindful means less multitasking, and how researchers are saying that multitasking probably makes us less effective?

Enter Penny. 

Penny had received a faulty communication from a creditor which needed to be straightened out before the next billing cycle. It was morning when Penny called them up and proceeded to spend the better part of an otherwise lovely fall morning navigating voice prompts and hanging around on hold.

Efficient and resourceful, Penny decided to make breakfast while she waited, and fished a package of bacon out of the fridge. After she'd peeled the slices apart and laid it in a pan, her dog followed its nose into the kitchen.

Penny, like a lot of us do with our pets, talks to her dog as though it were another human being. And Penny, like a lot of us, gives her pet all the attention she might give a human being when it walks into the room. So Penny, whose attention was first on the phone call and then on the phone call and the bacon, was now focused on the phone call, the bacon, and the conversation she was beginning with her dog.

Telling me about it later, Penny confessed that it wasn't a high, squeaky, puppy-mommy voice she was using as her dog sniffed her fingers, but a deep, rumbly-purry, big-doggie-mama voice. 

That was when Penny was prompted to leave a message, but because she couldn't hold the phone call, the bacon, the dog, and the conversation with the dog all in her head at one time, she didn't notice the phone prompt. 

And in her low, rumbly-purry, big-doggie-mama voice she said to the dog:

"Does mama smell like bacon? Yes, mama smells like BAcon."

Whoever listened to Penny's recorded message probably understood it better than Penny's dog did - the words anyway. But Penny's intent at the time she uttered the words was anybody's guess - anybody who heard about it at the company, which, by the end of the afternoon was probably everybody at the company. And of course there's always caller I.D. to keep the mix-up from remaining anonymous.

From now on, whenever I talk to my dog, especially if I'm saying something along the lines of, "Young lady, you are not leaving this house in that collar," I'll double-check that I'm not also on hold. And frying bacon.  

And that I'm not using my purry, rumbly voice.