November 3 – “Geeking out a sales guy”

We finally purchased the new worship computer for church.  Chris and I met Bryan, our resident computer geek, at Fry’s.  Bryan was there to make sure what we bought could do everything we needed it to do.  And it’s a good thing he was there.  He sent the poor youngster who waited on us back to his manager at least six or eight times with highly specific questions.  The kid would just stammer a feeble attempt at a response, then say he’d have to go ask. Bryan did a great job of reassuring him that asking for help was not a bad thing.  I’m not so sure the kid believed him, though. 

When we finally settled on the one we wanted, our nervous sales guy headed on over to ring it up.  Now there were only three items on the ticket that we were buying: the computer itself, one small adapter so we could run our projector, and a copy of Microsoft Word software.  He tallied them all up and printed us out a ticket that I thought was to be a receipt.  Obviously I have not been to Fry’s very much.  In our situation, that meant we were to take what he handed us (“a sales estimate”) to the front of the store and actually pay for it there.  We thanked him and headed down the aisle. After only two or three steps, though, I noticed a bit of a discrepancy.  The sales guy had specifically told us no less than four times that the copy of Word would only cost $50 because of an instant rebate offer.  The price on the ticket was $119.  I took it back and questioned him about it.  He ran it by his manager and they realized that the information he had given us on the rebate was only for the copy of Word where you have to pay a yearly fee on top of the original purchase.  We didn’t want that one, so they ran a new ticket.  Thanking them we began our walk toward the front door.  After two or three steps, I noticed that they had applied tax to the purchase.  Nope.  Laura the secretary would be all over that one, so back we went.  “Not a problem,” junior assured us.  Of course he had to get help once again from his manager, but he managed to get the proper information entered and a new ticket printed out.  And we headed back down … wait.  As I checked the ticket this time I noticed that the tax was still there.  Back to the drawing board yet again.  And this time the manager did everything by himself.  I think the poor sales guy was so flustered he couldn’t even type his own name.  All appeared to be correct this time, however, and we finally made our trek to the checkout line.  We got a chuckle on the way, though.  There walking in front of us was none other than … sales guy.  Guess he needed a break after dealing with us for an hour or so.  We made our way to the cash register and turned over our ticket.  A whole new set of punching in numbers began, and something was wrong.  Rescan.  More punching.  A turn to the supervisor.  “It says that the sales estimate was entered wrong.”  Of course it does.  Rescan.  Enter by hand.  Try a different bar code.  That’s it.  And finally we were on our way. 

All that remained was for Bryan to get all the Word software installed and then download the Mediashout software for installation.  But that is a four or five hour story for another time. 

Psalms 18:1-2 says, “I love you, O Lord, my strength.  The Lord is my rock, my fortress and my deliverer; my God is my rock, in whom I take refuge.  He is my shield and the horn of my salvation, my stronghold.”

Father, thank you for being easier to connect with than uninformed sales guys and complicated computers.  Amen.