1. I bought $6.46 in food at Star Mar­ket. I gave the cashier $20.50. She keyed in $6.50, gave me 4 cents in change, and closed the drawer. She won’t give me my $14 back until tomor­row after she counts the till. Not even after I politely explained and re-explained the sit­u­a­tion with the night man­ager. How fuck­ing retarded is that? Can they just take my money and keep it?

When I worked at Active Elec­tron­ics, John Sicurello taught me to make change the old-fashioned way, by ver­bally count­ing it back up to the amount that the cus­tomer handed you. You do this before clos­ing the drawer. That way, clerk and cus­tomer both agree on the amounts before the trans­ac­tion is com­plete. For added secu­rity against quick-change scam­mers, you leave the customer’s bills atop the till until after the change is made. It’s so simple.

11/16 UPDATE: Eigh­teen hours later, Star still won’t give me my money back. The man­ager can’t con­firm with the lady who counted the tills this morn­ing that there was a sur­plus of money. “Well, why don’t you call her right now and ask?” “She’s not avail­able now.” So I have to wait until tomor­row now. I get the feel­ing that with each pass­ing day, the odds of get­ting my money back fall precipitously.

11/17 UPDATE: He didn’t want to believe my story, but I pleaded with the man­ager to re-count the money from Wednes­day night, and he did. Guess what? It was $14 over. I’ll get my money after all.

2. There is a tent city set up out­side the Best Buy store. There are per­haps 30 peo­ple camped out on the side­walk wait­ing for the store to open. They arrived before it even closed. They were asked to move across the street from the store, which is why they’re all hang­ing out in front of the ‘labs. There must be a sale tomor­row. What hath our consumer-driven soci­ety wrought?

11/16 UPDATE: The Boston Globe reports that the crowd (which had gath­ered Wednes­day night) was actu­ally wait­ing around for the Fri­day open­ing of Best Buy. But after the line grew to sev­eral hun­dred peo­ple, the police sent them all home.