Puppy Chow

Bob and The Captain made their usual weekly trip to WalMart this past Monday morning - and this time they would procure pet supplies, as the kibble level had dropped below the point at which the skipper begins to have dire imaginings.

Their usual method is as follows: Robbie prepares a detailed list of necessaries. Bob, acting as coxswain, unships the Captain's skiff (their little black Civic) and navigates it to the WalMart in Chickenton. He there meticulously chooses a parking spot that puts the sun quartering into the rear passenger side window - the optimum position for sitting in the car and listening to audiobooks - without the slightest regard to the location of the store entrance. That's what Bob does at WalMart - sits in the parking lot and listens to audiobooks on his iPod.

Actually entering the store with his wife is something Bob does only occasionally, as he prefers to perform his shopping in burst mode, which is incompatible with the careful aimless wandering and stopping favored by The Captain. Inevitably, if they try to do their shopping together, Bob either spends the time applying gentle nudges to the Captain's aft quarter with the cart, to aid her in keeping focus as she shops, or emits very audible heavy sighs each time she stops to examine some hitherto unexplored bit of unremarkable merchandise. Sometimes the force of the breeze from one of these sighs is enough to jostle nearby product packaging, in much the same way as his bow wave does as he flashes by, when shopping unencumbered by the Captain. It's no surprise that the Captain doesn't find Bob's shopping behavior especially charming, and so they have worked out a method that gets the groceries bought, and with which they are both quite content.

But The Captain doesn't much care for the animal supplies part of the WalMart experience. The bags of chow and litter are big and heavy - they take up too much room in the cart, and they raise it's moment of inertia, making it difficult for her to steer. So on these days, Bob accompanies her in. They each get a cart and bustle over to the pet supplies - he to actually procure said supplies, she to point out the correct ones to get, which he can never remember correctly. Once the heavy bags are loaded into his cart Bob careens away to the front of the store, leaving Robbie to gather her wits and proceed to some nice relaxing browsing.

This day was a little different. It was a money order day.

Bob doesn't like to balance his checkbook - but neither does he like the idea of mistakes and anomalies going unnoticed in his bank account. To this end, he takes pains to make sure all withdrawals and deposits end with a seven. He will happily write you a check for $100.07 but not for $100.00. He pads all his deposits with the necessary pennies. He avoids using ATMs because it's impossible to draw out, say, $60.07. So instead of balancing his checkbook every month, he can simply look at the column of transaction figures to confirm the rightmost value in each is a seven. Using this method, anomalies stand out clearly. The chances of an error or spurious value ending in seven is only one in ten - which is satisfactory for Bob's auditing needs.

The system works very well except for two snags. First, the bank is always finding some pretext to assess a service charge, and it rarely ends in a seven. It took Bob several years to find a bank that would agree to either never, ever assess a service charge, or to make sure that all such charges were rounded up to the nearest seven cents. After many prolonged explanatory sessions with incredulous bank employees, he found a sympathetic ear in a computer programmer of his acquaintance who worked at the local community bank. This guy eventually created a special statement post processing job that did nothing but add whatever number of cents to Bob's service charge to make it come out an even seven at the end. The idea appealed to the programmer's subversive impulse - which he had almost no outlet for, working as he did for a bank. He called the program 'BobsAdderUpperToSeven', which he dutifully documented both in the code and on the actual statement. No bank examiner or auditor ever noticed anything amiss. "It's no more unusual than any of the other code I write for the bank," he said, "and it's the one part of the service charge processing I actually understand."

The second bee in Bob's ointment was that only some of the institutions to whom he sent money each month were able to handle the unlooked-for seven in the cents column. The power company didn't flinch at the discrepancy, but the water authority did - they would only credit him for the amount on the bill. The internet company worked with him, but the wireless provider would not. State Farm handled it in a unique way, sending him a monthly refund check for the difference, which he would collect until the checks added up to an amount ending in seven, whereupon he would take them to the bank and smugly make the deposit. If that took more than five months, he would go the the bank and deposit the accumulated checks, adding enough pennies to make up the right amount. The tellers never seemed to find anything unusual about his stack of checks and pennies that added up to something like $0.47.

To handle the unenlightened institutions, and keep his bank account in proper order, Bob was forced to use money orders. He would go to the bank and make a withdrawal to cover the amount of the bill plus fees, plus ever how many cents it took to make it end in seven, then buy the necessary money order at WalMart the next time he was there.

Bob did use his bank card for fuel, but as the cost of gasoline climbed higher, it became more difficult to stop the pump always on an even seven. He tried pre-paying, but that took too much time, especially since gas station clerks were strangely unwilling to take a credit card pre-payment for odd numbers of cents. Impertinent clerks insisted on knowing why, but he couldn't say because if other people knew then the security of his anti-fraud measure would be compromised.

So there were times when his tank would fill to overflowing without his being able to hit the magic seven. In these cases, instead of allowing fuel to spill, he would remove the nozzle from the car's fueling port, lay it carefully on the ground, enter the car, start it, bring the RPMs up to just short of red-line and calmly hold it there for a twenty count. This would use enough fuel to give him a few more tries for a seven. Only once did he need to repeat this action - it was a recalcitrant pump that didn't seem to have a seven in the cents column - and it required four attempts before he was finally able to depart the crowded station. He avoided that pump from then on.

So this Monday, after purchasing the pet supplies, he goosed his cart over the the customer service counter where they sell the money orders. There were two ladies working the counter, and two ladies being serviced. He waited. After some time with no apparent progress, a line began to form behind him. He considered which audiobook he was going to listen to when he got back out to his car, and was regretting that he hadn't brought his iPod with him into the store. He gave one of his signature sighs and, not realizing he was thinking out loud, muttered, "...shudda brought my danged BOOK." One of the ladies behind the counter gave him a tolerant smile, but he didn't notice.

After a few more minutes he began to pay attention to what was happening in front of him. All four ladies had the bored, slightly dumbfounded look people get when The System isn't working. In this case, it was the credit card processor. Bob surmised that the lady in front of him was trying to get a refund for some defective lettuce, and she wanted it put toward the gift balance on a credit card instead of just taking cash. She had not purchased the lettuce with that card, nor was it actually her card, but her daughter's. Something about the absurd transaction had caused the machine to freeze, along with all the other ones in the store. For all Bob knew, the request had brought the whole worldwide credit market to a halt. He began to consider how that might happen and what the consequences might be.

A manager was called. After another five minutes of no progress, Bob changed the direction of this thinking and began to consider how he might be of service - given the potential stakes involved. He briefly imagined nudging the lady's rear with the cart but(t) another idea occurred to him before it had moved more than an inch or two.

"THIS PUPPY CHOW TASTES LIKE IT'S MADE OUTTA PIGEONS!" he burst out, shaking the cart and glaring at the lettuce lady. He hadn't really meant to yell, but he was hard of hearing, and his impatience had overwhelmed his supply of modest decorum.

Everybody froze at the unexpected outburst, the breath catching in their throats. Bob continued to glare. After a few seconds, the poor lady gave an involuntary shudder and gathered up her produce to leave. Bob gave her a wild-eyed grin as it became apparent that she was preparing to exit his sphere of attention. She returned him a fearful look and hurried away, glancing back occasionally as she went. He noticed that the queue had thinned out behind him. Everyone who was still there was watching warily to see what would happen next - each having plotted an escape route should the man turn violent. The lady behind the counter edged back a little, thought about activating the silent alarm, glanced down at the Puppy Chow, swallowed hard and said, "M-may I help you, uh, sir?"

He gave her a saintly smile and said, "Yes ma'am. I would like to purchase a money order for eighty dollars and twenty six cents, please."

It took a minute. But as the shock wore off, the tittering began, followed by laughter. The manager lady had to assume a slightly crouched posture to keep from wetting her britches, she was laughing so hard. Bob got his money order, thanked his cashier sincerely, and made his unhurried way out to his car - a detached smile appearing on his face as he considered how glad he was to live in a world with such happy people in it.