Holy Lack Of Divison Skills, Batman!

Yesterday, I went to the grocery store to pick up, oddly enough, groceries. When I was finished, I scanned the available checkout stands and decided I would do self-checkout since I didn't have my usual I'm Feeding Three Boys Don't Judge Me amount of food in my cart.

I easily scanned my bread, peanut butter, cereal boxes, and crackers but hit a snag when I tried to scan my carton of milk.

When two more swipes across the scanning screen didn't solve the problem, I looked at the bar code and realized it had a wrinkle in the middle. Upon further investigation, I realize the wrinkle was permanent.

I looked at the young man supervising those of us crazy enough to try to check out on our own and motioned him toward me. The conversation went like this:

Me: The bar code for the milk isn't working. Can you just manually input a gallon of milk for me?

YM: Um, it isn't?

Me: No.

YM: Are you sure?

Me: *heroically resists both eye roll and sarcasm* I wouldn't have called you over here if I wasn't.

YM: *wanders back to his register and flips through a laminated book, presumably looking up the code for a gallon of milk.*

YM: *looks up* Do you know how much it was?

Me: They're on sale 2 for $5.

YM: Oh. *flips through book then takes out a calculator.*

Me: *tries to figure out what YM needs a calculator for*

YM: *fiddles with calculator some more*

Me: Um, do you need some help?

YM: I'm just trying to figure out...see, you're only buying one.

Me: Yyeess...

YM: *fiddles with calculator some more*

Me: Even though I'm only buying one, it's still $2.50 a gallon.

YM: *looks up, relief evident on his face* Oh, I was going to ask...so $2.50's okay?

Me: Yyeess...

YM: Okay, then. *puts calculator away* We'll just say it's $2.50. It's easier that way.

Me: Sure. Yeah. Whatever. *wonders how on earth YM ever got promoted to checker in the first place.*

Sometimes people worry me. They really, really do.