This morning, Cheeto came into my office to ask a favor.  “Dude, I need to borrow your corporate credit card.”

“Ummm…  no.”  Damn.  I had to ask.  “Why?”

“Mine’s maxed out.  Blake’s is, too.  I need to send the Starbucks gift cards to the respondents to our recent customer survey.  Sharon [our accountant] said you were still under the $3,000 limit.”

He paused a bit, considered his original request and why I would be hesitant to hand him my card.  “Would you mind getting them for me?”

I thought about this a bit.  Blake and I are both traveling to do marketing events next week.  “Okay, what do you need?”

“$600 worth?”

“Are you serious?  You are serious.  When do you need it?”

“As soon as possible.”

“Sigh.  Is there any other priority for you?  Okay, I’ll get them.  Write down exactly what you need on a sticky note.”

Ten minutes, Cheeto came back with a note: 26 @ $10/each, 17 @ $20/each.  This is why I have him write stuff down.
“I have a lunch date who should be here any minute.  Doing the cards is going to take a while because the Starbucks has a thick pre-morning rush of stimulant seekers.  I’ll pick up the cards late this afternoon.  Does that sound okay?”

“Yes, thanks.”

Hah!  I knew ASAP did not really mean as soon as possible.

I made my expected trip for coffee and waited about ten minutes before they could wield their magic and give me a dulche la leche.  While I was paying, I asked the lady when it would be quiet enough so I could come back to buy a shitload of coffee gift cards.   Answer: never.

My lunch date was over an hour late, but she was a lot of fun to talk to.  (I *need* to get out more.)  The rest of the afternoon was spent playing catch-up.  Then around 4:30, I was very hungry and ventured back across the street for the gift cards.  Before walking into Starbucks, I stopped at The King and Thai first to place my order for beef Pad Thai, four stars.  At Starbucks, there were to people ahead of me in line.  Two more came after me.  Out of courtesy, I let them ahead.  Then a whole group walked
in.  Fuck this mister nice guy shit.

The same lady I saw earlier was visibly sick with flu-like symptoms, but insisted she was okay.  I explained that I wanted to order forty-two gift cards in different values, all the while hoping she wouldn’t breathe near me.  I could feel the glare of the line behind me.

The short blonde chick who only seems to be serving food, chirpily suggested that “next time” I could just order them online.  As if I regularly buy forty-two gift cards.  Ah, if only Cheeto planned more than a day in advance.  Shorty opened up the other register.  Lasers on my back were shifted to the new line.

Sweaty lady found the last stack of seventeen cards in a funky motif.  It appears what they do is scan the card to get its bar code, then they enter in a credit amount.  She had a lot of difficulty with this machine.  I did not see the console, but it appears there’s some degree of timing involved, plus communicating with the Starbucks mothership.  If she scanned the cards too fast, she had to reset the machine to reprogram the amount on the card.  There seemed to be an indication that it charged, but occasionally she went back a card or two to verify it.

She worked through the first seventeen cards, then handed me the stack.  I decided “red is boring” cards would be benign enough.  These were sufficiently different looking that it would be easy to distinguish them from the $20 cards.  She started doing a batch of 26 of these in $10 configurations.  This time around went very smoothly as she synchronized herself to the natural rhythmic processing of the master computer.

She rung up the total: $580.  Oh, crap, I thought, there’s at least one card without any value on it.  I looked behind me.  A peek over my shoulder confirmed the crowd was now out the door.  This was not the time to go through those cards individually.  I’ll let Cheeto do that!

Once back at my desk, I went through the receipt.  There were only 16 $20 cards chosen, which narrowed it down.  I worked backwards through the list, eventually finding a card whose serial number was not reflected on the receipt.  I put a stick note on it.

“Cheeto, I’ve got good news, bad news and good news for you.”

Laughs.  “Okay, go ahead.”

“The good news is I have your gift cards right here.”

“The bad news is one of them does not have money on it.”

I paused a little bit for the dramatic effect to settle in.  On cue, Cheeto started going down the expected path of “I’ll send Aaron to go get them to check the cards.”

“The good news is I know which card.  I put a sticky note on it.”

Cheeto thinks I’m a god for being able to figure out which one.