December 14 - “The Day We Broke Walmart’s Computer System.”

My strange ache of the day: the middle of my left foot. On the bottom. Felt like someone punched my arch and left a bad bruise. Crazy. 

We spent a long time yesterday shopping. On line. I’m still not used to this whole online shopping thing. Just feels weird to commit that money and not walk out with the merchandise. Sigh. Welcome to the brave new world. 

We did return to the world of reality shopping (if you can consider anything about Walmart “real”). This time, when we were checking out, we decided to use an old gift card we had. I had already dutifully called the number on back to check on the balance. $20. Not enough to cover our whole bill, but certainly a start. 

But no. The computer rejected the card as invalid. We ended up at the good ol’ service desk. But they couldn’t get it to work either. In steps the Team Lead. Nope. He calls the store manager. Too busy to deal with it. He says to call the card office. And poor little Team Lead Guy is on hold with them for about thirty minutes. 

They finally connected off and on, only to inform him that … they suddenly couldn’t even log into their system. All their computers had mysteriously just gone down. The customer (that was us, if you haven’t been following) would have to try later. Meanwhile, we were told how to load the card onto our Walmart app. Of course that wouldn’t work until the computers came back up. Sigh. At least the day was memorable. Yep. “The Day We broke Walmart’s Computer System.”  

Last night was the fire department admin party. It was held at Fisherman’s Wharf, so the food was pretty good. Everybody paid for their own meal. After dinner we did a white elephant gift exchange. Lots of laughter and good-natured ribbing. 

And then … 

We made our way to the parking lot. The line to exit was interminably long. We waited a good 30 minutes. Finally we reached the exit. But we were a few minutes over the free time allotment provided by the restaurant. Even with a supposed 20 minute grace period. No amount of explanation worked. All their attendant could do was refer us back to the restaurant. Our “free parking” experience cost us $7. Fit with the rest of our day, I guess. 

‭‭Jeremiah‬ ‭33‬:‭14‬ says, “Look, the days are coming” — this is the Lord’s declaration — “when I will fulfill the good promises that I have spoken concerning the house of Israel and the house of Judah.”

Father, thank you for that long-suffering Walmart team lead guy. He went through a lot to help us. Bless him. Amen.