Friday: I don’t get cookies

On Friday, we decided to pop down to Loblaw’s to pick up some snacks. By “we”, I mean my two work partners, L and M, who are always game for a trip to this magical, wonderful place. The big-ass Loblaw’s is remarkable for a variety of reasons. First, it has a Nutella Cafe. An actual coffee bar, where you can buy pastries made with Nutella, and only Nutella, and where it takes three servers 10 minutes to make you a latte. Now, if you don’t know what Nutella is, it’s kind of like peanut butter except that it’s made with hazelnuts and chocolate. So, more like cake icing really. The big joke a few years ago was that the Nutella company was trying to promote its spread as being the perfect breakfast food for children. Just smear it on some white bread, and you’ll be good all day. While Nutella may taste good to some people (not me—I think it’s kind of gross), the problem is that the main ingredients are as follows, in the order they appear on the label: Sugar, palm oil, hazelnuts, cocoa powder. So, not actually very nutritious or healthy. Peanut butter is shaking its head, like, “You should have just stayed a fun food like me. At least I never pretended to be all vitamin-y and sh*t.” The best part is how Nutella tries to hide the fact that it’s junk food. If you go to their website and click on “Inside the Jar”, you end up in a circular search which leads you from “Inside the Jar” to “Our Ingredients” back to “Inside the Jar. Nowhere can you see an actual list of what the hell is ACTUALLY inside the jar. On the “Ingredients” page, all you get is a PICTURE of the jar with the accompanying text, “We choose only the freshest raw material, carefully selected according to a sustainable sourcing and a great attention to their quality.” Many years ago, Monty Python did a sketch called “Crunchy Frog” about an investigation into the Wizzo Chocolate Company, whose boxes of chocolates contained some disgusting ingredients, including, obviously, frogs. When questioned by the police, the owner says this: “We use only the finest baby frogs, dew-picked and cleansed in the highest quality spring water…we use no artificial additives or preservatives of any kind.”

(Cop: Don’t you even take the bones out?
Owner: If we took the bones out, it wouldn’t be crunchy, would it?!)

So, what are you hiding, Nutella?! If you’re really made with nuts, you SHOULD be crunchy.

Anyway, this post is not about Nutella (even though it seems like it just was). No, this post is about how I’m mad at Loblaw’s, even though it’s got a huge Joe Fresh, a liquor store, live music, a Medical Clinic, and at Christmas-time, the middle of the store becomes a giant gingerbread house. It also has the only self-serve checkouts that don’t make you “call the attendant” every time you use them. But on Friday, I needed to get some cash back so I could buy wine on the train (it’s a LEGITIMATE REASON, thank you), and I had to go to an actual human cashier. I should mention here that the other great thing about Loblaw’s is that you can get a points card, and rack up enough points to regularly take $20 off your groceries. I always have my card ready, because I will actually buy things I don’t really need just for the points. So, there I was in the Express Checkout line, all happy because it was Friday, I was getting the little half-cans of Pepsi that I love, and I was getting me some points. The cashier was super-slow and seemed kind of out of it, though, and it took 10 minutes to get through three people with less than 16 items each. Finally, I got my groceries checked through, and let me just remind you that I had my points card in my hand. There’s a sign above every cashier that reads, “If I don’t ask you for your PC Points card, you get a free bag of PC Chocolate Chip cookies.” Everyone knows this. It’s a long-standing and honourable tradition, and 99.9% of the time, the cashier asks. But on Friday, the woman slowly turned to me and said, “That’ll be $10.77.”

Me: Do you want my points card?
Cashier: Oh. Can I have your points card?
Me (excited): Do I get a bag of cookies?!
Cashier: I asked you for the card before you gave it to me.
Me: Uh…no you didn’t.
Cashier: *blank star*
Me: Really?

Well, I needed to get back to work, and a bag of cookies wasn’t worth causing a fuss over (even if they WERE chocolate chip), so we left. I told L and M about what happened:

Me: I’m so pissed. That woman looked me in the face and outright denied something that we both knew was true!
L: So you’re mad about not getting the cookies that you couldn’t eat anyway?
Me: It’s the principle, not the gluten. Besides, I could have taken them home for Ken. Or shared them at the office.
M: You should write a strongly-worded email.
Me: Meh. I’ll just blog about it.

I DID tweet to Loblaw’s, and their response was that they would share my experience with the store manager, and “sorry for the inconvenience.” I should have tweeted like Donald Trump though: INTELLIGENCE INSIDERS NOW CLAIM THE LOBLAW’S COOKIE PROMISE IS A ‘COMPLETE FRAUD’. SAD! Oh well, at least no one peed on me. And in the heart of the big city, just as it is in Trump Tower, that’s not always a given.

Saturday: Titus gets the third degree

Me: Hey! Who’s a good boy? Who’s a silly fella? Where’s your hippo?
Titus: Whoa! Slow down there, lady!
Me: Why? What’s wrong?
Titus: What’s with all the questions? Is this some kind of interrogation?
Me: No, I—
Titus: Why are you so interested? Do you think I’m hiding something?
Me: ARE you hiding something? The puppy doth protest too much, methinks.
Titus: What could I possibly be hiding?
Me: Gosh, I don’t know. Maybe something like the New Year’s Day Incident perhaps?
Titus: Ken should never have hidden all those little chocolate bars inside his new socks. I’m only canine, you know.
Me: They were nice socks!
Titus: And tasty, too. Anyhow, let’s deal with your questions one at a time.
Me: OK. Are you a good boy?
Titus: I try to be. It’s not my fault if you leave food lying right out in the open, inside hosiery or on top of the stove.
Me: “A” for effort, then. Are you a silly boy?
Titus: Hells, yeah. Wait, you said “sexy”, right?
Me: I rest my case. Finally, where’s Hippo?
Titus: I’m afraid I can’t discuss that with you. It’s part of an ongoing dossier that may or may not be unsubstantiated.
Me: Did you PEE on him?!
Titus: It was an accident. It wasn’t like he paid me to do it. Who in their right mind would do something like THAT?!