Avoiding County Lockup- What a Picture!

I swear I almost ended up in County Lock Up last week!

Really, I could see it happening

and a jury of photographers would have never convicted me

if it went to trial!

I stopped in at a Very Well Known Mass Merchandiser Big Box Store

to use their photo department.  I generally don't print too many pictures

but I was giving them to someone else and needed prints.

I used one of the banks of machines along the row, 

got my receipt but decided to stop in the next day for pickup

rather than wait the hour.

The Next Day

I arrived at the store and proceeded to the photo checkout counter

where I had to push a touch screen which would alert personnel

that someone needed assistance either with photo or a merchandise pickup.

After about 10  minutes someone finally asked if we needed help.

Yes. Why else would we be waiting in the line all by ourselves?

 When an employee arrived, he had no idea how to ring up photos.

He couldn't find the bar code and didn't know how much to charge.

"What about that huge blue sign above the counter that shows pricing," 

I suggested.  Ohhhh yeah, that works.

Except I had a 5 X 7 and there was no pricing to be found.

Not on the board,

Not on the receipt,

Not on the machines.

I think it displays only on screen but doesn't provide a summary on the receipt.

After three employees gathered to decide what to charge me,

one of them finally discovered the barcode.

Yipee!

I paid and took the photos out to view them.

Wait, I said, something is wrong.

Three of them (which I have printed before) turned out horrible.

They asked me- which machine did you use?

 One of them along the long bank of photo machines.

Where did they print out?

What?  How would I know?

Was it one of the printers in our back room?

Really?  You're asking ME which printer in the back room might have been used?

I have NO IDEA! 

Oh, and the 5 x 7 is fine but it cut the head off one of the chickens 

on the  4 x 6.

Oh, that's because you got a smaller size!

No, it doesn't work like that.  Photos are reduced keeping the proper size ratio.

Do you think they just cut the edges off to make it smaller?

Would your 8 x 10 of Aunt Lucy be reduced to a photo of her belly button

if you selected a 4 x 6?

See my two photos posted here?

One is BIG and the other SMALL.

The edges are still intact.

These are the people managing the PHOTO department?

I had about HAD IT by this time.

Please give me a refund for the four photos that are bad.

I will print them at Walgreens tomorrow.

(Which was a bad idea because they were 3 times the price).

I was Stressed to say the least - I have time constraints on these photos

and I thought getting them over the course of two days would be

sufficient for 1 hr photos.

I was wrong.

I did manage to control my temper

and avoid causing a scene that could have

left me pacing the floor behind bars in

the county lockup.

I signed up for Shutterfly.

Let's see if this goes any better, other than my horrible upload speed!