Rewards!

One of the gift cards I was given at the end of the school year was for a store I never go to. One of those office supply places. I took it in and was happy to find a gift card rack that included a small number of my favorite gift cards - iTunes. I also went and bought some pencils for the new Sudoku book I'd bought the day before with a different gift card at a different store. Somehow it would feel ridiculous to me to be using a gift card to buy a gift card, so I picked up some other small token purchase that I didn't really need so I didn't have to feel stupid.

I get up the the register, and my cashier for the day, Bobby, rings me up and then proceeds to give me a ten-minute dissertation on why I should sign up to join the rewards program for the store; apparently doing so would not only save me incredible amounts of money, give me the power to cure disease, travel through time and space at will, and speak seven new languages by the time I went to sleep that night.

As soon as Bobby -- I swear that's what this 20-something slacker had on his name tag -- started in on the pitch, I just began shaking my head in a most definitive example of the universal "No." Did this deter Bobby from his mission? Not so much. He just kept plugging through the highlights until I had to verbally cut him off with a "not interested." He almost looked personally offended at my rejection, as if I'd just told him I'd rather spend my summer clubbing baby seals with a crowbar than be his best friend.

I almost felt sorry for poor Bobby. But when I stopped to think about how much of my life he had stolen from me with his destined-to-be-fruitless sales pitch?

Not so much.