Saturday, July 16, 2005
How I became an inadvertent swimsuit thief
Yes, it's true. I am a thief, albeit an inadvertent one. This is the tale of how I spiraled into a life of accidental crime.
This morning after pilates, I decided to drive out to the Target pretty far from my house to see if they still had the Isaac Mizrahi swimsuit I tried on at the beginning of the summer and desperately wanted but did not have the money to buy. (I had already checked the Target very near to my office, and they didn't have it.) Since my annual 5-percent raise kicked in yesterday, I felt like splurging on a new swimsuit. Much to my dismay, this Target did not have the suit, either, merely oddly sized remnants of it (nor did they have in my size the yoga pants I also wanted to buy). My heart set on a new swimsuit, I headed down to Old Navy to check out their selection.
They still had plenty of suits, although it took some digging to find correct sizes. I took a few into the dressing room and was pleased to find that my favorite one actually fit pretty well. I decided to buy it, and went about hanging up the other suits, which is quite a laborious process, what with all the weird hanger pinchy-things involved. I was just about to hang up the suit I had selected when I thought to myself, "They're just going to take it off the hanger when I take it to the register. I'll just save them (and me) a step by leaving it off the hanger." Remember this, readers. I was trying to help the cashier! (And, OK, technically myself, too, but you don't have to remember that.)
So I take the suit up to pay for it. It's important to note that, although many of the suits on the rack had orange tags marking them down to $4.99, mine did not--it still advertised a price of $12.50 per piece. I figured it was probably on sale, though, and just hadn't gotten tagged, but even if it wasn't, I planned to buy it anyway, as it was still cheaper than the Isaac Mizrahi suit I'd originally set out to buy. Anyway, I get to the cash register, hand the girl the suit, and she scans it and gives me my total: $5.44. Upon receiving this total, my face registered a very visible expression of surprise, to which the cashier responded, "I know! Isn't that great?" This segued into a discussion of how my sister and I once found basic black swimsuits at Old Navy at the end of the summer for--I am not kidding--$2. Anyway, given all of this, I just figured the suit had been marked down again, which was not at all outside the realm of possibility, as they were advertising a 75% off clearance sale. I left the store, elated at the incredible bargain I had just stumbled upon.
It wasn't until I returned home and took the receipt out of the bag that I realized she had, in fact, only charged me for half of the swimsuit. And perhaps this makes me a bad person, but if you think I even thought for a minute about driving back out to that Old Navy and giving her the $5 for the other half of the suit, you'd be wrong. For one thing, it's not a short drive, and for another, this error was only marginally my fault. Sure, if I'd put the suit back on the hanger, the cashier would have easily been able to distinguish the fact that there were two pieces. But it's not as if I did that with the intention to confuse her and get away with only paying for half of the suit--I was merely trying to save us both a little time and energy. Besides, she should have been a little bit more careful with her scanning in the first place. And if the situation were reversed--say, she had shorted me $5 in change and I didn't realize it until I got home--I definitely wouldn't have gone back to get it. So I think maybe I'm OK, karmically speaking.
Then again, shortly after I left the store, with grand plans to wear my new swimsuit to the pool this afternoon, it started pouring. So maybe I'm not.
Yes, it's true. I am a thief, albeit an inadvertent one. This is the tale of how I spiraled into a life of accidental crime.
This morning after pilates, I decided to drive out to the Target pretty far from my house to see if they still had the Isaac Mizrahi swimsuit I tried on at the beginning of the summer and desperately wanted but did not have the money to buy. (I had already checked the Target very near to my office, and they didn't have it.) Since my annual 5-percent raise kicked in yesterday, I felt like splurging on a new swimsuit. Much to my dismay, this Target did not have the suit, either, merely oddly sized remnants of it (nor did they have in my size the yoga pants I also wanted to buy). My heart set on a new swimsuit, I headed down to Old Navy to check out their selection.
They still had plenty of suits, although it took some digging to find correct sizes. I took a few into the dressing room and was pleased to find that my favorite one actually fit pretty well. I decided to buy it, and went about hanging up the other suits, which is quite a laborious process, what with all the weird hanger pinchy-things involved. I was just about to hang up the suit I had selected when I thought to myself, "They're just going to take it off the hanger when I take it to the register. I'll just save them (and me) a step by leaving it off the hanger." Remember this, readers. I was trying to help the cashier! (And, OK, technically myself, too, but you don't have to remember that.)
So I take the suit up to pay for it. It's important to note that, although many of the suits on the rack had orange tags marking them down to $4.99, mine did not--it still advertised a price of $12.50 per piece. I figured it was probably on sale, though, and just hadn't gotten tagged, but even if it wasn't, I planned to buy it anyway, as it was still cheaper than the Isaac Mizrahi suit I'd originally set out to buy. Anyway, I get to the cash register, hand the girl the suit, and she scans it and gives me my total: $5.44. Upon receiving this total, my face registered a very visible expression of surprise, to which the cashier responded, "I know! Isn't that great?" This segued into a discussion of how my sister and I once found basic black swimsuits at Old Navy at the end of the summer for--I am not kidding--$2. Anyway, given all of this, I just figured the suit had been marked down again, which was not at all outside the realm of possibility, as they were advertising a 75% off clearance sale. I left the store, elated at the incredible bargain I had just stumbled upon.
It wasn't until I returned home and took the receipt out of the bag that I realized she had, in fact, only charged me for half of the swimsuit. And perhaps this makes me a bad person, but if you think I even thought for a minute about driving back out to that Old Navy and giving her the $5 for the other half of the suit, you'd be wrong. For one thing, it's not a short drive, and for another, this error was only marginally my fault. Sure, if I'd put the suit back on the hanger, the cashier would have easily been able to distinguish the fact that there were two pieces. But it's not as if I did that with the intention to confuse her and get away with only paying for half of the suit--I was merely trying to save us both a little time and energy. Besides, she should have been a little bit more careful with her scanning in the first place. And if the situation were reversed--say, she had shorted me $5 in change and I didn't realize it until I got home--I definitely wouldn't have gone back to get it. So I think maybe I'm OK, karmically speaking.
Then again, shortly after I left the store, with grand plans to wear my new swimsuit to the pool this afternoon, it started pouring. So maybe I'm not.
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