I live in such a charming little town with all kinds of quaint things happening around me all the time. I like to keep everyone up to date with the local happenings or my experiences with the crazy characters that make living here so interesting. 9 times out of 10, this is just about a funny interaction I had with a cashier. And this week is no different.

I find that cashiers love it when you do little bits that slow down the transaction, and which approximate humor. Whenever I buy alcohol for minors (I don’t drink), I get carded, because of my youthful appearance, and a full beard that makes it obvious that I’m hiding something. In this case I’m hiding a notable lack of masculine facial features.

Cashiers typically say, “Could I see your ID?” I think it’s funny to pretend like they’re just excited to see my driver’s license, not just dutifully enforcing the dictates of the State, so I say, “I’ll even let you hold it, if you promise to be careful.” And then I make them promise. They love this.

I pulled this bit with Scarlet, a cashier over at Sweetditch’s own Martin’s Country Market, and she was the exception that proved the rule. She refused to promise to be careful with my license, which never happens.

So I refused to let her hold my license. She said that if I didn’t give her the license, she couldn’t sell me the three 40s of Mickey’s malt liquor that I was apparently going to take home to my trailer to drink in order to work up the courage to kill myself. Scarlet was wrong, but pretty sharply spoken (if Scarlet’s listening, I actually live in a mobile yurt). The truth was that I couldn’t afford to be out the 10 bucks a few of my smooth-faced Millennial friends had promised me, so I had to acquiesce to Scarlet’s demands.

But I still wanted to brighten Scarlet’s day, so I pretended to not know how the credit card console works. I would get almost through the transaction and then cancel it. I did this three times in a row. Scarlet’s face was a papier mache mask of anger, but I could tell she was close to cracking. This time I fully intended to complete the transaction correctly, but I’d gotten maybe over-used to pressing the wrong button, and so when the machine asked if the price of 13.36 was okay, I pressed “No,” very confidently.

There are words that if you say them loud enough to a customer at Martin’s Country Market, your employment will be immediately suspended. Scarlet said most of those words to me. So when Jessica took over I did the license bit with her, and it went down really well, she really enjoyed it. So I guess Scarlet learned her lesson.