I am the world’s worst pirate.

Not only did I epically fail at downloading movies from the internet (purely for demo purposes only of course) to show at our office Scary Movie Lunch Hour, I turned down a bunch of gold doubloons.

I was tasked with finding a copy of Halloween (the original) to show at lunch today, but I’ve been impossibly busy all week. Without any legal options at hand (I remembered last night around 11pm), I turned to the internet where I’m usually able to find, download, and burn anything my heart might desire. I don’t know if the internet ran out of copies of Halloween, but I couldn’t find a damn thing. Oh, sure, I could find more Halloween porn than you could shake a stick at, but this is a work function – not a usual Thursday night at my place.

Not wanting to admit defeat (and have to work during lunch instead of watching movies), I opted to go to Walmart on my way to work this morning. How bad could it be? Surely the rest of North Vancouver wouldn’t be attempting to buy last minute candy and costume pieces at 9 in the morning! That would be foolish!

And yet, that’s exactly what happened. I’m a little smarter than the average bear though, so I planned my attack in advance. I knew I needed to get a) candy, b) Diet Coke, and c) horror movies, so I picked the first two items up on my way to the electronics department where I would be able to pay for everything at once. See, I am smart. With an A and everything.

I didn’t have any luck finding a copy of Halloween – for all I know, Walmart doesn’t even stock the DVD because Jamie Lee Curtis once looked at a gay or something – but I did pick up 28 Days Later and The Ring for $8 each. Confident that the two movies would adequately kill time at work, I made my way to the cash register.

.. which was staffed by the STUPIDEST WOMAN ALIVE.

I made the mistake of challenging the display on the register, because although the sticker on 28 Days Later said $7.97, it rang up as $9.83. Not a huge deal, but those are my pennies and I had better things to do with them than give them away to Walmart. I made her change the price – to which she glared and sighed and took 5 minutes to figure out how to void – and she continued ringing my items in (incorrectly, as she double-charged me for my bag of peanut butter cups).

Then I ruined her day.

I paid with via debit, and took advantage of the Cash Back feature to get $40. You’d think I had just skull-fucked her dog, or something – she was plainly HORRIFIED that I would ask for such a thing. She had no money in her till! How was she supposed to give me $40? I offered no solution, because it frankly wasn’t my problem – just give me my damn cash and sort your enormous troubles out later. After many heaving, martyred sighs, she pulled a $20 and three $5s out of her drawer. Clearly, that does not equal $40 – so she put the $20 back, and pulled out a roll of loonies.

Then she tried to hand me the $25 roll of loonies and three $5s.

I laughed at her.

She kept insisting that I take the large, non-foldable roll of change but I refused. As simple math was clearly beyond her skills, I finally told her to give me the $20, the three $5s, and 5 of the loonies – she could ask her manager to restock her till later. You could practically hear the wheels turning in her head as she realized this would work, and I made it out of Walmart with my scary movies, foldable money, and a shiny new headache.

I’m sort of regretting turning down the doubloons, though.

For a Halloween workday, I am getting a lot of very strange looks at my horns. However, you just plain can’t go wrong with green glittery eyeliner. People at work have asked what I’m supposed to be:

I’m a stressed out tech writer who’s going to fork the next person who springs a bunch of surprise process changes on me >:E

I knew this pitchfork would come in handy.