Mr. Euless Goes To Lowe's!

My bedside lamp, the one by which I do my homework (with charcoal on the back of a shovel, just like young Abe Lincoln (Lincoln is known in some circles (i.e., mine, which has a very small radius (You may be wondering - will these silly digressions ever end? Will he ever get to the meat of the story? It's a post about a trip to Lowe's - how much meat are you expecting?)) as the Mr. Euless of the nineteenth century)), burned out recently. Which is why I found myself stumbling through Lowe's in the early hours of a recent Saturday afternoon, looking for a replacement bulb.

I got the feeling that Lowe's isn't very interested in selling light bulbs. They want to sell lighting fixtures, lighting systems, lighting displays; I think they'd just as soon leave the selling of the actual bulbs to Walmart or Target. Where I probably would have gone had I thought of it rather than subject myself to a Lowe's scavenger hunt for a 120-volt halogen bulb with kung-fu grip. Or something like that.

I thought there would be a light bulb section, one wall or aisle devoted to nothing but any light bulb you could possibly want, or even imagine. Instead they seemed to be scattered randomly throughout the lighting department, probably in accordance with some sociological theory about how to promote impulse buying, the frustrated focused consumer (which I flatter myself I am) be damned (which I also was). I had circumnavigated the department several times and had also explored the frontier to ensure that they didn't have their own department distinct from Lighting; I thought about admitting defeat and leaving but I wasn't quite ready to deal with the chirpy old guy at the door who would want to know, or at least pretend to want to know, if I found everything okay. I made one more pass through - which worked out well, since I actually found them this time, although I still think this whole ordeal (except for the driving to the store part and the trying not to get run down in the parking lot part) could have been avoided if they just put all the bulbs in one spot. But then what would I have to write about?

Paying for the bulb produced its own weirdness. Lowe's has self-service registers, which is nice. I was paying by credit card, so I scanned the item, indicated I was ready to pay, touched the screen to pay by credit card, and swiped the card. I was then prompted for the last four digits of my account number. I don't get this. It can't be a security thing, at least not an effective security thing, because the digits are embossed on the card I just swiped. I started to screw up - I was so sure it was asking for my zip code that I started punching that in before reading the instructions. Then I had to CLEAR (not CANCEL), pull the card back out of my wallet, and punch in the numbers it wanted. I guess maybe it could be that they transmit the credit card number without storing it and then want the last four digits to print on the receipt, but that seems like a bassackward way to do things. Which would kind of fit in with how they display their goods.