I must be officially middle-aged. I was just in Old Navy, and not only did I think there were very few cute things for my daughter, but I was also put off by the lack of cashiers at the checkout. It is 2 weeks until Christmas, and they had 2 cashiers working.

During lunch hour.

When people who work try to get their shopping done.

One of the cashiers was moving like she was underwater and about to run out of air. Maybe she was just silently protesting the fact she had to wear an elf hat at work, but she didn’t have to take it out on all of us. I was standing in line, waiting to buy three pairs of socks. I do think that Old Navy has really cute Christmas socks, and I had picked out a pair with gingerbread men on them and two more with snowflakes.

The other cashier was moving a little more quickly, so three people ahead of me in this line went over to that register. That put that cashier behind. Then a guy wearing his official Old Navy headset kept walking back and forth very officially between the two registers with a shirt on a hanger in his hands. Hmm. No elf hat here. He was careful not to make eye contact with any customers, and took his shirt over to an empty register.

Was he opening a new register to handle the overflow? Could it be? I’ll never know. He spent 5-7 minutes trying to slide his official register card and get the register going, but never made it. After 15 minutes of waiting, as the line trebled, I tossed my socks on a nearby display and headed out of there. I used up my whole lunch for three pairs of socks I didn’t even get to buy.
I did enjoy holding them. And I saved myself $15 bucks by not buying them, I guess.

When I got back to the office, I was relieved to find out it was not that I was middle-aged — all my coworkers are hip, younger folks. They said they wouldn’t have stayed either!