14 Days: Español Gigante

You have to give me some room here since my car accident last night--so this "first" will probably not impress anyone. However, it was more difficult than you'd think.



I'm on my way to our church's monthly first Sunday lunch with my newly acquired friend and forced chauffeur Molly (she's got a very safe Volvo), when I direct her into the Giant (that's a grocery store for those unaware) parking lot. We were told the theme for the lunch was red and green--so we bought some spinach tortellini and tomato sauce. Mmmm, mmm, mm. We went to the self-checkout lane. Unfortunately, we chose the wrong lane. As the person in front of us was having technical difficulties requiring the manager to come over 3 times to help them. And then, they had like 37 coupons--for only about 12 items. Anyway--the point is, it took forever.

For some reason, I was in a rather goofy mood--I think the adrenaline from last night's accident was still pumping through my veins. So when the screen requested us to pick "English" or "Spanish" I decided to go with "Si." And quickly determined this would be my "first" for the 40 day countdown. I know, pretty lame. But it turned into quite the mini-fiasco.

It was easy to scan our two items in Spanish. Choosing to end the order was a decent guess and then picking "credito" and sliding my card weren't too tough to figure out. But then the tricky part came. I realized I wanted to snap a pic of the screen saying "¡Gracias!" to add to this blog--but was nervous we'd take too long as the line behind us had gotten quite long especially after the previous customer needed so much help (and had WAY too many coupons). My trusty iPhone did its job and then we were heading out--but then we were confronted by the manager saying, "You have to sign." D'oh. I forgot about that. And both the main screen and the credit card sliding machine screen were not showing any place to sign--no plastic pens dangling. No english telling us what to do. The manager pointed down where we saw this thin LCD screen on the scanning area with the dangling plastic pen. Ahhh. I signed and then still wasn't done as the computer was waiting for me to press the signature accept button--at least that's what I think. I found some random spanish words inside the signature screen and pressed my finger and Voila, c'est fini!