4th of July Weekend

My 4th of July Weekend was sort of a bust...

The family was going out on the boat for a few hours. I was also meeting up with a friend to finally take Alberto's 2 year old pictures. I figured I'd have time before the "boat", especially since the "boat plans" were never concrete. Only to learn that the plans were concrete but my family lacks the ability to communicate. So, I missed the boat -- literally.

I was okay with that since I had errands to run and went to Walmart. What? Walmart, what happened to Target? What is a Target Girl doing at Walmart? Well, I got in a fight with Target!!
In a nutshell...I got the Target credit card so I could get the 10% discount after every $1000 you spend. So, I use the Target card to pay everything, get my coupon and then do my once a month shopping where I get everything I need. In the past, if my Target card was at it's limit (they gave me a low limit and it takes 48 hours before they post the payment -- well, they post it but hold all your available credit), I'd use my other card and get the 10%... Fine no big deal. Well, big deal because I got a new cashier and well, this was impossible to do. They told me to call the Target credit card people and see if they could authorize this purchase since they had received but had not registered my payment (balance in full -- I don't carry credit card debt) so I could get my 10% off or if they could increase my credit limit.

Okay, I've been in the store for an hour on Friday evening because I needed diapers/pull ups and I had Alberto and Camille who were hungry and getting increasily irritable and cranky. And well, they were getting that way too. I was describing myself there first. I just told the girl to forget the discount and just pay the bill with my regular credit card. She insisted that I call and try to the Target people to authorize the purchase. She would suspend my purchase when I was done, she would bring it back up and finish the transaction. I just wanted to leave already.

So I call Target credit card customer service...um in India! I didn't get her name because I couldn't hear her. And then after I explain everything she tells me she is very sorry that the store people lied to me but there was nothing I could do I needed to come back another day. I asked to speak to someone else, her supervisor or manager. She assured me that no one would tell me diffrently. We did this a couple times and then she said she was happy she was able to help me. I said, "no, you did not help me let me speak to your supervisor"....dial tone.

Now, I've spent so much money at that store, I just felt that I deserved a little bit of respect. I mean come on!!! So i get back to the register and tell the girl in a dejected voice that the Target people hung up on me. She was she was sorry and tried to pull up my transaction. Guess what? She did it wrong and lost the entire sale. Do you think I was going to stand there while she rang everything up? NO! I told her to just ring up the diapers and I was out of there and would consider whether or not I ever went back to Target.

But before I left I wanted to share my wonderful experience with the Manager. Afterall, the customer is always right and the Manager is supposed to care. WRONG! I got some just graduated high school person with little customer service skills to tell me she was sorry, the check out thing was a training issue and if I wanted I could send in a post card. Somehow, that did not make my shopping experience positive. So i went to Walmart the next day.

Back to Fourth of July....

Now that we weren't going to go out on the boat I wanted to make sure that Alberto got his fireworks and so he stayed up for those. He loved them. he calles them "far" and "boom". And then today, I wanted to do some fun summer stuff so in the late afternoon, I thought we would head on over to Matthenson Hammocks Park and play in their wading beach.

I should have taken Alberto's resistence to put on his bathing suit and even get in the carseat as an indiction. But I didn't. I am his mom and I know better. We were not goign to spend the afternoon watching Nemo or Cars. He was cranky and irritable and then fell asleep in the car as we arrived at the beach. So, I turned around and headed home --- I tried.

Of course once we got home, he woke up. It was a short nap. I wonder if he was faking it. So, I pulled out the slip and slide, connected the hose and we had fun!