The University of Colorado bookstore has a problem every year with immoral students stealing books, candy, iMacs, etc. During the first week of every semester, the store swarms with confused freshmen, and haughty looking upperclassmen. The store hires scores of student employees to monitor the crowd, and if they could, I'm sure they would provide these security forces with tasers to intimidate. However, since the student employees are mostly indifferent, high, hippie college students, theft still occasionally goes unnoticed. In my junior year of college, I braved the crowds to get my painfully heavy pile of books. For one of my books, the checker could not find the skew to ring up the price, so he just put the book in the bag with my purchased books. I gave him a baffled look, pulled the book out of the bag, and showed him where the skew was on the book. He countered with his own baffled look, drowsily said, "wow, you're honest," and continued checking out my books.
I left to meet some friends on the quad to eat lunch, and observed how inexpensive all my books were on my receipt when I realized that the checker decided not to charge me for my most expensive book, the $150 Voet and Voet Biochemisty text. Maybe he thought it was karma to give me my most expensive book for free, but I didn't see it that way. I called the bookstore, and told them they hadn't charged me for the text, and told them they could charge me over the phone if they wanted. The guy on the phone didn't believe me for some reason, and just started getting aggravated when I kept harrassing him to let me pay for the book. Frustrated, I told him that I was still on campus, and would just head back to the store and pay in person. I went back to the store, marched up to customer service, and explained the situation. The looks of incredulity on the staff's faces were awesome to behold. The customer service guy had his mouth slightly ajar the whole time he checked out my book.
He told me, "This is incredibly honest of you... I wish I could give you a discount, but I can't."
"That's alright," I said, "I was planning on buying the book anyway, so I have the money to pay." I've recounted this tale to people before, and I'm always amazed how people's opinions are split in half. They think I'm either really nice, or really stupid - honest to a fault.
Today, my honesty just turns into TMI situations. I tell people lots of things that they really don't need to know, like that dress makes you look like a hussy, or I had to dissect an asshole once in anatomy class. Sometimes I just blurt out my thoughts without thinking, but other times I think I blurt out personal details to make somebody else feel less isolated in their own problems. It's as if to say hey you're not alone, my life is awkward too. But the joke's on me, because almost nobody has a life nearly as awkward as mine, and nobody likes being called a hussy. I've integrated sassy sarcastic sayings into my honesty over the years to mess with people, but at the root of it all, I am just joking around and don't like telling lies. hmm... I'm not sure what the moral of this story is... maybe it's don't lie, or maybe it's lie in moderation... actually, it's probably honesty is for losers.
--By Farrah, who didn't want to say anything, but those pants give you muffin top... sorry!
4 comments:
Those bookstore people sound like strange folk. I don't usually put up that much of a fight when someone is insisting on giving me money. (Not that it happens too often, alas.)
If there was no TMI there would be no awkward turtle and even less of a reason for awkward turkey, which ultimately means no fun. More fun. More fun.
It was freezing in wal mart! Not as cold as an ice pop, but still fairly chilly.
turns out it was only 7 bucks though, so it was not a big deal.
I want a puppy! And I'll get rid of this self diagnosed bartholian cyst, but only after the anatomy final! And i thought it was just a pimple on my lower left labia.
This one time I ordered a jacket from the internets and the internets accidentally sent me two! So I called them and told them that I wanted to send the extra one back to them and they were just dumbfounded. I had to tell, like, three people that I didn't want credit for it, I just wanted to send it back. They were so shocked that they went and told the vice president of the company or something.
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