I fully intended to stay calm. This was the kind of low-stakes errand that didn’t have to set my emotions aflame.

I was committed to returning a set of Amazon purchases that did not pass muster … and despite having a price point so low that I would normally absorb the cost as not worth the effort and gasoline required to drive to the Smiley-Arrow returns collection site.

Of course … I was in Staples during the penultimate week of back-to-school shopping, and it was dawning on me that management had only supplied one associate to operate the till.

And the register in question was not the one handling regular shipping, where a clerk who had just disengaged with a sale informed me it was not the register dedicated to........

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