I hate Kroger and Wal-Mart...and don't know how I feel about Sprint

Some days, man...some days...

The campaign started today, the Pasta for Pennies campaign, that is.  We had students collecting at four or five stores around town - Krogers and a Sam's Club this weekend.  It would've been at a Wal-Mart, too, but the only one that had allowed us to collect canceled on us not even thirty hours before our first collections at that store were to begin.

Then I got news today that at least one of the Kroger stores at which we had scheduled store collections notified our kids that they were cancelling our second two weeks of collecting - because of the frickin' Girl Scouts.

It doesn't matter that I have a form signed by one of the store's customer service folks saying that PHS students are allowed to collect for the LLS on all the dates listed (Saturdays and Sundays from today through Valentine's Day).  Nope, the Girl Scouts decided to get started a little early this year, so our kids are going to get chucked.

And if one store is forced into letting the Girl Scouts in at the start of February, then I'm guessing that there are a bunch of Krogers that are going to kick our kids out - nothing to do about that tonight, though.

Of course, calling the Forest Park Kroger and effectively yelling over the phone at the manager on duty didn't help my mood, leading me to close the conversation and send my cell phone buzzing across the room into the sliding doors where it flew apart into a half dozen pieces - two major ones and a bunch of smaller ones.

So, off to the Tri-County Sprint store because the cell phone has become a necessity in my life - particularly as I'm likely to be getting more and more phone calls on the next few weekends.

"Nope, you aren't eligible for an upgrade yet.  Not 'til June.  Let me see what I can do."

Turns out that with a little creative finageling, the customer service person was able to add a third line to our account - costing us $10 more a month - but then offer us a 15% discount, bringing our previously $80 bill per month down to about $77 per month (before taxes and stuff).  In the process, I got a phone that is supposedly $249 for only $50 - and I can send in a rebate form to get all by $2 bucks back.  The new third line had to have a new phone number, but once the accounts got activated, my new phone was switched so it's on my old phone number.

So, I shattered my phone, got a new phone, (and a third line - 226-5041, in case anybody wanted to know, though the only thing attached to that number is a destroyed cell phone), and will end up paying slightly less money per month than I was beforehand.

The business world - as I have said before - make no sense to me at all, and I want as little to do with it as humanly possible.