Dumb Policies "R Us

Sonya and I went to Toys ‘R Us tonight to see if we could find a couple of diecast Lightning McQueen cars for Ry Ry. If you haven’t already seen the Disney/Pixar movie “Cars”, then you probably have no idea who Lightning McQueen is. This would be the “star” of the animated film.

We search the entire store without any luck, then decide to ask a clerk if they have any of the elusive toys. He tells us that they keep them locked up at the front counter because the “collectors” (translation: Ebay jipsters) hoard them all, leaving none for the kids.

So we walk up to the front counter and ask if they have any of these cars available. The store manager tells us that they have a few other characters, but no Lightning. She proceeds to tell us that we’re limited to two per customer.

So I ask for four of the cars, since both Sonya and I are there (with Ry Ry in tow by the way). She proceeds to tell us that we equal one customer, therefore we are only allowed to purchase two in total.

While I might physically resemble two people fused together, I find it hard to understand how we’re considered a single entity when it comes to buying toy cars. We’re obviously there with our child and from our questions it should have been obvious that we weren’t collectors, but no dice.

“Two per merged customer, its store policy!” claims the store manager.

“That’s not what any of the stores are doing,” Sonya replies.

“Well, each store has its own policy,” retorts the toy Nazi.

Now I’m getting annoyed, but also a little proud that my wife is pushing the toy Nazi on her bogus policy. If anything, we Lee’s love to contest phantom rules that are devised on the fly. It’s a sort of sport with us. Of course debating a Toys ‘R Us store clerk is like beating up on a blind-folded invalid.

So we leave it at that. Well, I take one last shot at the assistant toy Nazi who reveals that the store gets its shipments on Monday nights and has the items on the shelves when the store opens on Tuesday mornings.

“Wow, are you sure you should be revealing that top secret information,” I chortle with a touch of disdain.

The assistant toy Nazi didn’t have an answer for my rhetorical pot-shot. Make that the assistant blindfolded invalid.

I left wondering what the brass at Toys ’R Us headquarters would think if they found out that there night manager was essentially keeping customers from purchasing store merchandise. Considering the number of times Toys ‘R Us has filed for Chapter 11 protection over the last 10 years, they’d probably have no response either. Senior Vice President blindfolded invalids I suppose.