I hate having to store hop. This happens all of the time to me with Dollar Tree. I live near like 6 dollar tree stores. I’ll be looking for, say, work gloves. So I go to the one next to me, shit, they don’t have it, well now I gotta decide how far I want to go to the next one. I go to the second closest, fuck, they have gloves but not the kind I’m used to. Fuck, gotta go to the third one but now that’s a little further away because I had to drive a bit away from the other two. Same applies to other stores.

It just seems like nothing works the way I expect it should these days, and I’m happy to be wrong, but I don’t think my expectations are that high.

I make an appointment at the driver’s license office for 10 a.m., I kind of expect to be seen around that time, especially since they tell you to show up at least 15 minutes before your scheduled appointment. Certainly, I don’t expect to have to wait 2 hours to be seen.

I go to the store to return an item that was missing parts, I don’t expect to be turned away completely because the “printer is down”. I have the receipt, can’t you just make a copy and refund the very small amount of money or let me exchange it?

I go to the bank to withdraw a few five and ten dollar bills, I don’t expect to be told “I don’t have enough”. I especially don’t appreciate being treated like I’m the first human in history to want specific denominations for a withdrawal.

I get told to return my internet equipment to any of your locations, only to be told you can’t accept that at your store. Why did the customer service person I talked to on the phone say any location, the company website have your location in the list of locations available when I filtered by “returns”, and my final bill state “return equipment to any location” if your location doesn’t accept returns?

I go to the doctor for a specific health concern (that unbeknownst to me is a red flag for a major problem), they give me a medicine that actually exacerbates said major problem without ever mentioning it or testing for it first. You’re the expert and professional, not me, and I guarantee if I’d asked about that major problem because I saw something about it online, you’d have made a snarky comment like “don’t confuse your Google search with my medical degree” or similar.

And all of this, plus much, much more, in just the past month or so.

It’s late April and already starting to get hot, I’ll soon need an electric fan and in one month it won’t be enough. Half the year is unbearable, and it’s only going to get worse with time.

My cars ignition coil and spark plugs are completely destroyed. Will cost me lots the repair…

I’m slowly losing the sense of belonging I had to my work. I’m afraid I’ll never financially recover from it if I fully realize it.