The Kroger Incident

Last February, I had to go to a local pay-agent (the Kroger on Krafft Road in Court of Flags) to pay my SEMCO bill. (Big deal. I'm sure I'm not the first who's ever had to pay in person to beat what he or she thought was a deadline. More on that later.)

In I went, check in hand already prepared minus the amount, and a stamped envelope to mail it in. 

 Here's where things got interesting. 

I know there's a service fee for this. I left the Amount space on the check blank for that reason. I asked the snark at customer service (they don't wear name tags, probably for good reason) what the fee was. The exchange went pretty much like this: 

Me:  How much is the fee ?

Snark: What utility is it? (Don't you just love people who answer questions with questions?)

Me; How much is the fee? 

Snark: What utility is it? 

Me: How much is the fee? 

Snark: What utility is it? 

We could have gone at this all day, I suppose, until one of us became bored. Finally, Snark revealed the key puzzle piece. The fee is different for each utility. (Why didn't you fucking goddam say so? I wanted to ask. I did, only without the curse words.) 

What's the fee? I still had to ask? 

Two dollars. (Glory hallelujah, praise the Lord, at last.)

I added $2 to my SEMCO balance and wrote the amount on the check. 

Here's where things got even more interesting. 

If you pay by check, they want a picture ID. I have a valid US passport. I don't have a Michigan driver's license or state ID card. The cost of having them replaced , whatever it is, is something I can't cover. All they will take are Michigan driver's licenses and state ID cards. 

Your writer, a couple months away from age 65, then learned he's have to walk to the nearest Chase ATM, about a half mile away (up on Keewadin by the mall) to get cash. When he found that out, after leaning that a valid US passport is unacceptable ID, remembering that the wind chill that day was right around zero, he was, to put it things mildly, pissed. 

There's no fucking god-damned reason why they can't accept a passport as a valid picture ID. At every other place in town where I have to show a picture ID, a passport is always accepted. They could, but they don't because they just don't fucking want to. 

Out into the deep freeze I went, on foot. It's about quarter past two. Here's my receipt from the mighty Chase, where they do accept passports, where the tellers are actually nice, and helpful, showing a transaction time of 14:54 (2:54 PM).

Thirty-six minutes walking time assumes thirty-six minutes needed to walk back to Kroger. One hour and twelve minutes needlessly spent in weather cold enough to produce frostbite. 

Back at Kroger, I notice Snark #1 and a dude who I recognize on sight as the manger watching me. 

Here's the Kroger receipt, showing the time of day as 3:26 PM:

Ten cents off for having a Kroger card. God bless them.

Manager Dude -- his name is John -- waited for his opportunity, and informed me that, if I continued to threaten "his girls," I would be banned from the store. (I had to keep from laughing, remembering every black exploitation film I've ever seen where a pimp refers to his stable of whores as "his girls.")

#1: I never threatened "his girls;" I only attempted, out of necessity brought on by poor customer service skills, to force information out of them. 

#2: if  his store accepted the same picture ID the rest of the world does, this drama would have never happened. 

I'm too old to take bullshit from some nitwit who suddenly feels like a tough guy, and too old to be threatened over something preventable that I didn't even start. 

I waited on this, and on Feb 15th called the Kroger regional Michigan office (it's in Novi, 248-536-1500, and no, all their website has is a store locator, you have to dig to find this). I re-told the February 7 incident to a middle-aged cat lady who took my number and promised to pass on the details to her boss. 

Really? I thought at the time. And brown cows give chocolate milk. 

Time passed. I looked on the Kroger web site, tried the most promising phone number, and spent twenty minutes listening to automated messages. And no, there is no live customer service person at the Kroger HQ in Cincinnati, Ohio. 

Forty-two days have now gone by with no response on this. That's a long time for phones to be down, or for any of the usual excuses for not answering a customer inquiry to work. Dunno about you, but I think they're hoping I just forget this and go away. 

They're wrong. 

They needlessly forced an old man to walk for over an hour in zero wind chill to get them cash, then threatened him, then ignored him, and he doesn't appreciate that. 

The old man, therefore, decided to let social media do the work, and told the same cat lady at the Novi regional office this afternoon (March 27) that he would. And he keeps his promises.

So here we are. 

The moral of this tale being: don't fuck with people, because you never know who might be tired of being fucked with, resourceful enough to remember everything, turn it into a narrative, and post it on not one, but two, social media sites. 

Fuckheads.  

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