Price check

We have a giant wall of nail files.

The wall is intimidating. Hundreds and hundreds of nail files in neat little cubbyholes lined up on the wall, staring at me.

What do they want? Why do they stare? Where did they come from? ...I think my job is making me crazy.

A woman is standing near the giant wall, picking individual flies out their cubbyholes and inspecting them as if she is expecting to find nutritional ingredients printed on the sides.

"Hey!"

I believe she is speaking to me.

"How can I help you?"

"This file don't have a price on it, is it free?"

...

...

...

Clearly. In fact, everything on that wall is free.

No. Is this your first time in a retail store? Are you just being hopeful? Why in the world would you think that it was free? You can't be serious.

I look at her. She is completely serious.

I walk over to where she is standing and make a big show of looking at the TAG LOCATED DIRECTLY UNDERNEATH THE SPOT SHE TOOK THE FILE FROM THAT CLEARLY SHOWS THE PRICE.

"No ma'am, it says here that the file is $.79."

"Oh, yeah, that's too much."

She puts the file back in its little cubbyhole.

I take it back out and shove it into my eye socket and as I lay, bleeding to death on the sales floor I am able to transcend the meaninglessness of my job and nothing hurts anymore.

Sigh. Sorry, that's not true. What actually happened was I watched her walk around the store for another 20 minutes, picking up various items that were CLEARLY labeled with prices and yell at me,

"How much is this?"

I feel this woman is giving me more credit than I deserve. For some reason she is under the impression that I can "magically" sense which item she is picking up, in the back of the store while I am in the front so that I can tell her the appropriate price.

She is also under the impression that I am capable of memorizing the exact price of all 18,000,000 items we have in the store at any given time. (ok, that might be a slight exaggeration but it's up there.)

I have also (regrettably) given her the impression that I care that she is unable to read price labels and would love nothing more than to follow her around deciphering them for her.

She left without purchasing a single item.