Lowe's

    Once again, can't bury the lead: Dad is still weak, but feeling much better and significantly stronger. Hopefully we're well on our way to back to normal.
    As to Lowe's, one of the good things about getting older is that it gets harder to carry grudges. This is not because you get nicer or more easy-going (easier-going?) but because you can't remember anything. The last time I went to Lowe's, I swore that it would indeed be the last time I went to Lowe's. However, yesterday when the need to get something from Lowe's rolled around again, I couldn't for the life of me remember what had made me so mad.
    Then I did. Lowe's has an every man for himself approach to checkout. Unlike Barnes & Noble, say, or most banks, where everybody lines up in one line and then the next person is called whenever a checker is free, there's just a bunch of checkers and everyone lines up at each. If you get behind a bad checker or a slow customer, you wait and wait while other people who arrived later but who are quicker get checked out ahead of you. This happened to me last time and I understood that it happens. But when I finally got to a checker, he wanted my phone number for some reason. They have a program called MyLowes where you can register with your phone number. I hadn't and had no interest and just wanted to GET OUT OF FRIGGING LOWE'S and told him so, succinctly.
    Yesterday, the air purifier alerted me that I needed a new filter. I went to Home Depot. Unfortunately but unsurprisingly, they carry a completely different line of air purifiers, so I was left with Lowe's. Dreading it, I went. And got in and out inside of ten minutes, with nobody asking me anything about a phone number. It's just possible that when I told that young man that if they want any repeat business they ought to think about making it less rather than more of a pain in the ass to shop there, that somebody listened. Or maybe somebody at Lowe's has maybe a tiny bit of common sense.