Truly and honestly the only way for you to really get my frustration is to take you through my…read moreordeal. Luckily it ends with a very nice gesture from an unlikely person. So I guess we all get our happy ending after all.
In order to ensure the youth of Hawaii live a long and healthy life, every year I borrow a health kit from the DOE. It comes with about 36 glass test tubes that use something that looks like crisco to show how much fat is in typical foods. While teaching the students about fat using the test tubes, I, of course, break one.
Fast forward to finding Hawaii Chemical and Scientific. I came around 12:40 and that is totally my bad because they have lunch till 1pm. This is after I drove past the building and I can't turn around because it's a one way street which meant I had to drive an extra mile or so to circle back around. I noticed their hours are only weekdays from 7:30-2:30 which aren't exactly friendly to employed folks. So basically I can only come here on my holiday. I sat and waited and a guy comes by and starts chatting my ear off. I am civil but not exactly friendly. While I wait, I take pictures, and basically jazz up their Yelp page.
When they open, I walk in and notice a sign that is posted knee height that says customers can not come past this point. Well, it's kind of an L shape so I figure where the merchandise display is located is safe. Well, the older man says something really sarcastic such as, "It's fine, I guess you no one has eyes down there." Well, hey. It's not clear if I can't go past the counter where the sign is into the employee space or wherever your crazy sign is referring to. Clearly only you know where that space is.
Turns out customers do not wait at the counter, they wait at his desk. Odd shop. So the chatty dude lets me go first, I pull out the broken test tube and tell him I need to replace it. He shows me two test tubes they have. Then he goes on some really irritated speech about how you get a receipt, you provide government issued ID, no returns, no exchanges, blah blah blah. Basically he won't sell me the tube because I need to make a $10 minimum cash transaction.
The chatty dude very generously tells me I can add it to his bill. I happily give the fellow customer money. He tells me they made that rule because cocaine addicts were coming in to buy test tubes. Well now I'm torn, I'm touched the customer is helping me out and very much offended the store won't help me right a wrong and help the children of Hawaii. And do I really look like a drug addict? Whatever the case, the store got my business, the other customer actually made some money because I didn't have exact change and I got my test tube. They lived happily ever after!