Corsage Catastrophe

So today is the day of my brother's prom and I decide to go with my mom to pick up the corsage for his date. We're running behind after spending an hour at the library looking for books on endangered species for my mother's sixth graders to research and we still need to go to Wal-Mart to get my dad some garden seed plant thing so he won't accuse us of blowing him off and to get me insulin so I won't die. I tell my mom I'll run in to Hy-Vee and pick up the corsage to save us the time of parking, etc. so we can get a move on and brother won't be late.

Only I go into Hy-Vee and tell them my name and there's no flower. They look in the refridgerator where they keep all their flowers and there's nothing back there. "It's lime green," I say helpfully, in case they're retarded and can't read their writing. "There are three lime green sweetheart roses with white foliage." They look blankly around. Clearly, it's not there.

We check out the sheet with the order, and in the column that reads "Done" there is no checkmark. The fucking flower never got made and he has to leave in forty minutes to pick his date up on time.

"No problem," the older woman with stupid blonde hair in a stupid cut says. "I'll do yours next." Then, as I stand there and watch, another woman comes up to the counter. She's clearly A Mom as she's got at least two decades on me, maybe more. Hers isn't made either. I throw her a sympathetic look until I hear Stupid Blonde say, "No problem. I'll do yours next." I immediately take back my sympathetic look as I worry about my place in line. Then Stupid Blonde says, "Michelle, refund this woman her money." I look to see who she's talking about and it's The Mom--NOT ME. Stupid Blonde has just become Stupid Blonde Bitch and I now hate her.

I wait patiently for five minutes while they tell The Mom it will be ten minutes for her order and probably twenty for mine. Then I run to the parking lot and explain the situation to my mother. We agree she will go to Wal-Mart and pretend to be me picking up my insulin and come back and pick me up.

Then I call Brother. He's rather apologetic while I seethingly explain the situation through clenched teeth--"I'm experiencing agism RIGHT HERE--discrimination right in the middle of the florist section of the local Hy-Vee! If I were a MAN--"

"That doesn't fit in with the ageism theory."

"Oh. Right. Thanks. If I were a MIDDLE-AGED MOTHER, this would NEVER happen."

He is appropriately sympathetic because he's grateful: 1) I'm picking up his corsage and it has now been 25 minutes since I walked in, and 2) he's driving my car to pick up his date.

We hang up and I watch the clock. Thirty minutes tick by and I call my mom and tell her to take her time--the corsage was supposed to be ready ten minutes ago and she's busy making an orange corsage and sticking baby's breath into some bouquet at the same time while I stand trying to be tall enough to glare at her over the top of the discount roses.

I decide to run and get pop for work as I'm pretty sure that my boss has been stealing mine again. Then I remember that I'm out of cereal and if I don't have any of that, I will definitely starve. All of my pants have been a little tight lately, so that may not be a bad thing, but I buy the cereal anyway. Then I go stand in front of the florist again.

There are now three employees working on one bouquet of flowers, one working at the cash register, and zero working on my corsage. I pretend my phone rings and say loudly into, "Well, I don't know what to tell you. I'm still at Hy-Vee and they haven't even STARTED on your corsage yet. You'll just have to call Cathy and tell her you'll be late for your PROM." I glare some more at Stupid Blonde Bitch, who has the decency to drop the carnation she'd been busy shoving into a vase and pick up some white sweetheart roses. "I'll call you when I leave," I say, continuing my fake conversation into the cell phone, "if I ever DO leave."

I see Stupid Blonde Bitch whispering to the woman named Michelle who, I notice on her name tag, has worked here eight years and yet can't run a fucking cash register, or really do ANYTHING except stand around apologizing to people for not having their orders finished.

Michelle calls me over and refunds my money (really my mother's money, $27, thank you very much) and when I go back to standing in front of Stupid Blonde Bitch, she says, "I apologize for the wait. I don't know what happened; everything got all messed up." I think in my head, don't EVEN try to be friends with me now, Bitch!

The thing is, I worked in a grocery store for four years and I know how customers blame you for things that are not your fault. It was clearly NOT her fault that mine wasn't made--the night staff had prepared next weekend's corsages instead of this weekend's corsages--but it IS her fault that she ignored me, made someone else's corsage in front of my face even when I was clearly the first customer in line, refunded that woman's money but NOT mine until she'd made me wait 40 more minutes, and worked on other people's orders instead of mine while ignoring me some more. I was beyond the point of pretending to be courteous.

So I say, "I just wish I'd known when she said it would take 20 minutes, she really meant an hour." Then I stomp away and pull out my cell phone to check in with my mother again.

Ten minutes later, she FINALLY finishes the corsage (seriously, why do they have four people working back there when only one of them can actually do anything???) and begins working on the boutinierre.

"Wait a minute," I say, "we didn't order a boutinierre."

She ignores me (shocking!) and shows me a picture of a purple caterlilly. "We don't have these in stock," she says.

I stare at her blankly, then realizes she expects an answer. "Oh. Well, we didn't order that, so it's okay."

She and Michelle look at my order form. Then they look back at the picture. "But we don't have that," Stupid Blonde Bitch repeats.

"Well," I repeat, "we didn't order that, so it's okay. We ordered a lime green wrist corsage with three sweetheart roses, baby breath, and white leaves."

"But this is a purple caterlilly," she tells me.

I think, don't care! but answer, "Not mine."

Finally, they realize that they mixed up the order (ya think? I think) and continue making the boutinierre despite my repeated, "We only ordered a corsage!"s. They hand over the corsage and boutinierres and I glance at the clock as I leave. I have spent a full sixty minutes waiting for a stupid corsage that was supposed to have been done six hours ago.

As I'm leaving, Stupid Blonde Bitch smiles and says gaily, "Thank you. Come again!" and I want her dead.