Sunday, October 17, 2004

That's righteous, brother (not)

I am now working on the topic of righteousness for the SS lesson. Righteousness, at its most basic level, is the fulfillment of expectations in a relationship, whether it be husband and wife, employer and employee, citizen and government, etc. It's not just a religious thing. As an example: the local market does not always have a righteous relationship with its customers. The advertising circular came out with oranges at 3 for 88 cents. So I bought 6 oranges. The clerk punched in the product number for the oranges and it rang up as 5 oranges at 2 for 79 cents and the 6th orange rang up as 98 cents a pound (or something like that). I was charged $1.97 + 55-cents when it should have been $176ish. So I said to the teenager who was at the cash register (she seemed rather brain-dead, I'm sorry to say): "These oranges rang up incorrectly. They are supposed to be 3 for 88 cents". She just stood there and looked at me like I was speaking a foreign language. So I grabbed my groceries and went to the office, handed the manager the receipt, and complained that the oranges had run up incorrectly. The manger turned this over to an assistant and I got my refund. R really liked the oranges, so 2 days later I went back to the store and got 6 more. This time the manager was at the cash register. He entered the product number, and guess what? The oranges rang up as 6 oranges at 2 for 79 cents. He immediately realized that this was a mistake so he voided that sale and re-entered it correctly. But the point is, they had not changed the store computer during the two days that had elapsed between my puchases. Customers who bought oranges and did not pay attention were overcharged. I would hope that the store isn't being run by crooks, that this was just an oversight. In any event, it was totally unrighteous. . . and I don't trust them anymore.

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