Who, me?

It’s been a while…it’s been a while.

Busy? Nah. Other priorities? Yes.

But time has come for me to blog…rather, rant.

I’m still here with my old client. Poor me? Nah. I’m leaving this client in 2 weeks’ time and I’m keeping my fingers crossed for my next assignment. Oh well, that’s not something to worry about this time… I’m still about to go for vacation. (Yeah, baby!)

What happened today ruined my lunch and my whole afternoon. Hmm… let me rephrase that – What happened today made me feel so bad. Yes, that sounds more right.

At 11:53 AM, we (together with my colleagues), headed to Building 5 to have our lunch in the cafeteria, just like what we usually do. My client has this concessionaire rendering catering services. And I have this discount coupon wherein for every food exceeding $4.79 that I buy from them, I get one punch on the coupon. And my 11^th lunch/punch should be discounted by $4.79.

So, this noon, I brought my coupon and my credit card to the pay station with my tray of food. Upon receiving my credit card and coupon, the cashier immediately swiped my card to the register (I have to add, without even an opportunity for me to talk). As she was about to punch my coupon, I told her that it’s full already…that I should have a discounted lunch. So, she called her colleague (I think, the Supervisor) and asked the other person to reverse the previous *swipe*. As they were waiting for the register to do its thing, I kept on hearing her saying to the Supervisor that “Usually, they tell me beforehand that the coupon is full…blah…blah…blah”. At this moment, I was about to explode but due to the number of people waiting in line, I just decided to hold my temper. As I headed out of the pay station, I was shaking my head while looking at her.

What made me feel so bad is why did she need to blame me for her own fault? I really don’t like people who try to escape from their fault by making excuses and putting the blame on other people! Why can’t you be responsible for your actions? Your procedure should be to look first at the coupon card before swiping the credit card! And if I tell you that the coupon card is *full*, when it’s not, are you not going to verify it? So, next time, I can just probably tell the cashier that it’s full already, so I can get a discounted lunch – even though my card is short of 3 punches to get a discounted lunch!

I was so disappointed and felt so bad at that moment that as soon as I laid down my tray on our table, I couldn’t help but kept on jabbering with my colleagues! (Pasalamat at hindi pa ako sa Tagalog tumatalak nyan…kundi, maririndi ang buong cafeteria!).

She’s actually a nice cashier until this afternoon. From now on, I will no longer use that coupon card. What’s the big deal…I still get my meals reimbursed. I was just trying to claim what I’m entitled to and somehow give my client some savings.

I was about to write a letter to Eurest Dining Services to complain about this but up to now, I’m still thinking about it. (As a background, one Mexican resto around here fired one of their guys recently. And my colleagues think that that was because I complained about that specific guy not so long ago.). I don’t want to make a big deal out of it especially in these times of economic breakdown. I’m just disappointed. That’s all.