Today I Felt Like Ben Stiller

Today I felt like Ben Stiller. You know the scene in the airport, in the movie, Meet the Parents, where he is trying to board the plane to get back home and is stopped by the gate attendant because she has not called his section of the plane yet...but there are no others in the waiting area. His, "you've got to be kidding me look", is priceless.

Well today, I was buying something very large from The Home Depot and the register I chose was the one closest to the exit. I made my purchase, stuffed the receipt it my cargo pant pockets, steadied my awkwardly balanced cart and proceeded about two feet towards the door, before being summoned by the security guard. He wanted to see my receipt, even though he must have been about 24 inches from where the receipt was printed out and where I had just completed the transaction. Of course, I somehow had misplaced the receipt in one of my multiple pockets, so I now had to stop and check each of my pockets for the hidden receipt. I definitely had the Ben Stiller look on my face at this point.

I waved the crumpled receipt at him, but this was not good enough, he wanted to inspect the receipt, which he did, and after careful review, with regal flair, he initialed the receipt with his worn out highlighter. This always happens to me, why? I'm right there, he saw me pay for it.

I dismissed my thoughts as being to critical of the guy, after all he was just doing his job. This however evaporated quickly as I reached my car to pull out my keys and the Home Depot receipt came out with them, without the mark. How could this be? Well it's because he ended up initialing the broccoli I had just bought on my supermarket receipt...