Shopping Trip Gone Bad

This past week I decided to take a trip to Costco. It had been several weeks since I had been there last and I was out of all kinds of things like diapers, wipes, toilet paper, frozen chicken etc. After dropping the girls off at school I headed down to the nearest Costco which is about 30 minutes from our house. I got there around 10:30am. I got Alexandra out of the car and loaded her into the cart and found my way to the door. As I flashed my Costco card toward the man at the door, I was abruptly stopped by him and told I was not allowed to enter. What? Not allowed to enter? Apparently here in England, traders are the only ones allowed in in the morning. Individual members like me can shop after 12 noon. Lovely! I now had an hour and a half to kill waiting to get into Costco.


I went back to my car. I thought about going to the Indian/Pakistani grocery store I have wanted to visit that is in the area. However, I did not have the postcode for it to program into my trusty GPS (they call it a SatNav here) and find it. I thought of calling Charles so that he could quickly look it up for me and I would be on my way. However just that same morning before leaving for Costco, I had changed my cell phone provider and as a result switched my old sim card for a new one. Therefore, I had NO ONE's phone numbers (including Charles) in my phone. Actually that is not true. By some fluke, I had ONE phone number - a friend of mine who's husband is a partner at Charles' current firm. So I called and had a chat with her for a few minutes and I snuck in the exit of Costco and went to the restaurant and got Alex and I a snack. By the time I had done all this and wasted some more time, it was finally noon and I could enter Costco. Hooray!


I went in and promptly loaded up my cart with all sorts of groceries, Christmas presents, Christmas decorations, rugs, diapers, wipes, buckets of pretzels, toilet paper, large bags and boxes of this and that. For anyone who shops at Costco, you know everything is BIG and your cart fills up quickly because everything looks delicious or appeals to you in such a way that you must buy it because you have never wanted anything more in your life. So my cart was overflowing with items and I could barely fit the large box of diapers and wipes on at the end. I get in line to pay and unload all my items onto the conveyor belt (which is a chore within itself). The woman rings everything up and we manage to pile it all back into my cart. I reach for my debit card (since they don't take credit cards) and throw it in the card reader. The clerk announces to me that it has been declined. She tries again. Declined. Three times is a charm. NOPE. Declined! I turn red and start to panic. There are LOADS of people in the line waiting to check out. Christmas shopping begins in earnest on November 1st here since we don't even have a holiday like Thanksgiving to distract us. Every cashier has a huge line. People start looking at me in frustration. What do I do? I can't call Charles (I don't have his phone number). I can't pay with check. I don't have my check book. The cashier suggests I go try my card in the ATM. So out of a panic, I leave Alexandra with the cashier and run down to the ATM. (Wow what was I thinking there? I would never normally do that.) My card is declined. If it didn't work for the cashier, why would it work in the machine? I race back to the cashier who suggests that I step aside and figure something out while she starts checking out another customer.


I stand there with my loaded cart dumbfounded. I had just used my debit card that morning to pay my new cell phone provider to put minutes on my phone. It worked then. I finally just give up. I tell the woman that I will just leave the cart and all the items except for the large box of kid's lunch-sized juice boxes. Alexandra started getting restless at one point while I was shopping so I had given her one of the juice boxes I was buying so I had to at least pay for those. I pay the woman cash for the juice boxes and take the awkward box under my arm. It is heavy and awkward so I cannot carry Alex. So Alex is walking through crowds of people and their enormous carts lined up quite a way back so the man at the exit can check their receipts at let them out of the store.


I continue to encourage (a nice way to put it) Alexandra to walk forward. She is easily distracted by anything shiny or that moves. We finally get up to the man who must check our receipt and to my horror, I have misplaced it. He sends me ALL the way back to find it or get a new one. So I again make my way, WITH MY TODDLER, all the way back through what feels like hundreds of shoppers and their gi-normous carts all the way back to the cashier. We have no luck finding the receipt. The cashier flags down her manager who goes in the back room and has to print out a receipt SPECIAL for my stupid box of juice boxes! He brings it out after a few minutes and I again fight my way all the way back up to the front of the store, while barking at Alex to follow me, show the man my blasted receipt and exit the store with my ONE item. I drive home and arrive at 2:30pm with 30 minutes before I have to pick up Abby and Sammy. I feel so upset that I have truly WASTED the ENTIRE day, including the HOUR AND A HALF of doing nothing while waiting to get into the store. I call the bank and find out that between the time that I paid for my cell phone minutes and I tried to make a purchase at Costco they had decided to put a stop on my card because they thought there were some strange transactions on it, one being a purchase in Istanbul several days previous made by Charles! I do appreciate them looking out for us but could it be at a worse time?


I end up going back to Costco the very next day and reloading my cart with all of my needed items (as well as a few more) and this time my card works.What a nightmare. I don't think I can handle another trip to Costco for quite a while.