Women In Ag

[Kay/NC]

Flabbergasted...I guess that's the word for it.  Pushed my honking full cart out of Sam's into the soaking mist this afternoon, about 45 minutes after I got there.  Ever cautious, I locked my bag and cup of tea into the front seat, and proceeded to fill my trunk with groceries and supplies.

It's an hour's drive home from this closest NC club.  I had gone to that city for an estate planning appointment this afternoon.  With that far to drive home, I decided to step back into the store to use the restroom, so as not to have to make a rest stop on the way home.  Left my bag locked in, and just headed inside with my keys.

When I had crossed all the way back across the huge parking lot, walked inside, and started back past the same woman who had checked me in less than an hour previuosly, I said, " I just put my purchases in the car, and came back for the restroom".

I got maybe a dozen feet past her, and she shouted,"You have to show your card!"  

I turned back towards her and reiterated, "I have finished shopping...I just need to use the bathroom."

She was kind of nasty when she screeched, "You can't go unless you show me your card!"  

Knowing it was far across the rainy parking lot, locked in my car, needing to go pretty badly, and also having been told in the past that I don't have to show the card to pick up prescriptions at the pharmacy, which is just past the bathrooms, I turned around and said, "If I have to walk all the wsy out to my car in the rain, and back in, I will wet my pants".  I turned and kept walking, ignoring her  louder screeching.

As I approached the restrooms, a guy with a walkie talkie came out of the office, and I could hear this same woman's voice over his handset, saying, "I tried to stop her, but she just kept on walking".

He didn't try to stop me, so I kept on into the restroom.  I did not feel my presence warranted   a full-fledged fugitive search.  

As I started to exit the store, the woman yelled our across the entrance vestibule at me.  I turned around, and she started screaming at me that I had to go get my catd from my car.  I said I was NOT going to slog back and forth in the rain, to show her my card a second time.  

She kept insisting, and I finally said, " Ma'am, I have been told I don't need to show my card unless I am here to shop somewhere besides the pharmacy. I was done shopping, just needed to use the bathroom...I have come back in like this lots of times".

She said, "That's right, but you do to use the restroom...go get your card!"

I think the next thing I said was some approximation of, "Make me...."    I swear, I was so furious by then, I would have waited to be arrested before I would have been forced to do such a ridiculous thing.   I had just dropped $392 and change, and now was being begrudged some cheap toilet paper.  

The security guy overhearing all of this says, " Just tell them you have to go to the pharmacy from now on...."  

My reply was, " I don't lie, and that is bulls$@t!"  Not my normal response, but I had had It!

 Keep in mind that this was the same woman who checked me in not an hour before, and that anyone can walk past with no card shown, IF they lie and say, " pharmacy" instead of " restroom".  Keep in mind that it  was raining the whole time, and I am a limping woman, pushing sixty harder than I like to think about. 

Does this seem like sn absurd situation to you, as it did to me?  She was totally ignoring several other people walking in, the whole time she was pushing her point with me. I felt harrassed and embarrassed by this bullying B.  

Does this kind of ridiculous stuff ever happen to you, or am I just the only one lucky this way?