Get This Interaction On Tape!

When I am a young and penniless student, I attend summer language courses in Oxford, and on the weekends, we are driven to London and let loose in the city. I use these trips to take advantage of the huge discounts at the so-called “mad barking sale”, spending my yearly tape budget there.

It’s our last London weekend, our plane leaves tomorrow, and I’m at the desk with my new purchases, a return, and a defective case. As a theft prevention measure, the store only has empty cases on the shelves and cashiers fill them with the cassettes at the desk.

Me: “Hello. I’m buying these tapes…” *puts the empty cases on desk* “…and I’d like to return this one, as I bought two by mistake…” *puts a full case on desk* “…and I’d also like to have this case exchanged, as it has a hairline crack, if possible.

I put an empty case on the desk, as the cassette is in my Walkman, being played.

Cashier: “Sure, we can do that.”

We exchange some small talk as the cashier quickly goes through the operations of filling and changing cases and presents me with my purchases already in a bag and the total. I pay and thank her.

Me: “Hope to see you again next year!”

Cashier: “You, too. Have a safe journey!”

Once at home, I got a look at the bill and realised that the cashier had both deducted the price of the returned tape AND put it in the bag with the rest of my purchases, changed the cracked case and put a new cassette in it, and discounted a few items that weren’t on sale at that. Now I surely hoped to see that cashier again

The extra cassettes made two of my friends very happy, but when I went back to the music store the following year, the cashier did not work there anymore. Bummer.