when i was in nursery school, there was an incident where one of the cleaning staff poured some cleaning solution into one of those opaque plastic juice jugs (you know, with the handle and pourer tip - dumb mistake, especially in A NURSERY SCHOOL) and left it on the table. at snack time, a (slightly careless) yet unsuspecting young helper poured several glasses of it to the kids, who started drinking it. apparently it was similar in color to juice. pretty quickly, the mistake was realized when kids started spitting it out and vomiting and crying, but still it could have been even worse. i was lucky to not get any juice yet, but about 5-6 kids had had some. this was over 20 years ago, and i feel like these kinds of things will continue to happen no matter what regulations there are due to our own human stupidity.

@alejo699: anti-freeze tastes sweet just due to the nature of the ingredient, ethylene glycol, but the color is there for a reason. to the naked eye it looks neon green (an unfortunate coincidence now with gatorade's many fancy colors - maybe they shouldn't make drinks the color of anti-freeze....), but it has that dye there so that if someone is suspected to have ingested anti-freeze, it will fluoresce on imaging so doctors can know for sure and then appropriately treat.

@jpx72x:
ah, bubb rubb to the rescue

i actually sympathize with the CSR's lack of empathy for the OP since my own days of guaranteed sleeping in are long gone (maybe i'm just bitter), but is it excusable for someone who gets paid to deal with customers effectively to catch an attitude with said customer? absolutely not. is it reasonable to request later callings from a huge company that definitely has the infrastructure to accomodate such a request? damn skippy.

@curmudgeon5: are you sure you were perfectly nice? i mean, with a name like curmudgeon... :P

i'm going to play devil's advocate here: maybe the CSR was just looking for a friend to have a bitch-fest about how much they hate waking up early and work and shit, and the OP didn't bite. think about how hurt the CSR must have been. all she wanted was a friend. *tear*

@dmolavi:

the real rowhouses are in south, west and east baltimore

@67alecto:

when i went to see 'gangs of new york' the film stopped and melted with 15 minutes to go. still have never gotten about to seeing the end of it... got free passes and popcorn though, woo!

their name reminds me of that classic A&W rootbeer commercial. the name is...

it's actually most likely not walmart or the manufacturer's fault per se, but rather just an unfortunate coincidence. from the story and looking at the pictures, it's probably an allergic contact dermatitis. for anyone else out there who understands medicine (although if you do, you probably already know this) it's a type IV immune response (delayed type hypersensitvity) involving T-cells. so in other words, yes, an allergic reaction, but not the type that you think of from, like, a bee sting for instance (little medical lesson for ya: that's a type I hypersensitivity). the response is delayed and your body can react well past the initial insult, which was whatever she's allergic to. and yes, it can even get progressively worse because your own T cells are attacking your skin. the sandal situation is actually a classic example for dermatology instruction since it's easy to see what the cause was and it's relatively common. see shape of sandals - see the shape of lesion.

if it were truly a chemical burn, it would be an irritant dermatitis, but that would mean that anyone would have this reaction if exposed long enough, which, gauging by the low numbers afflicted is unlikely.

now, should walmart have recalled the sandals really quickly after people reported this? probably. are they at fault and should they be responsible for the damage to her feet? out of good will maybe, but again, it's just an unfortunate coincidence that someone with the susceptibility happened to pick the right (or wrong) sandal with the particular thing they are allergic to. i doubt there was anything neglectful here. it's really unfortunate and i hope she gets better.

@stuartny:

i've been in the opposite illogical situation. the supermarket near where i went to college has about 15 checkout lines, probably 5 or 6 of which were self checkout. if you ever went to the grocery store after about 10 or 11 (which, being near a college and in the middle of a town ended up being a lot of people), they shut down all self checkout lanes. but then they would have 1 or 2 cashier lanes open, which would lead to a huge line of people trying to check out. damn inconvenient. there was never a paucity of employees in the store, so i never understood why they couldn't have the normal employee or two responsible for overseeing the self checkout. at least have one self checkout lane open for people who are there to buy a late night snack or a box of condoms or something.

way too many comments to read through to see if this has already been asked: i could sliiiightly understand this if she were to use a card, but if she was going to pay with cash (as mentioned) there's no way for them to track the sale to her, so where's the danger in answering the question (fake answer or not) this particular time? "big brother"'s got nothing on you. unless of course they go back to check the surveillance camera to see your face and then look through the DMV database to find you, because clearly that 11111 sent off alarms in the upper offices since obviously it should have been 212xx. and then, once they caught you, hopefully they'd send you to a nice comfortable psychiatrist's office to have a little chat about those nagging little paranoid delusions.

i'd love to be in the head of the HD employee when confronted with the problem. and leaving without your items is just impractical and wasteful. how much gas did you burn just driving over there? instead of leaving without the items, why not just go to a regular checkout line? or tell the employee to pick something for you? or better yet, just hit a button and pay your cash and realize it's just going to be part of a stastistic, and that sometimes, maybe, just maybe, not every company has a personal vendetta against you.

@humphrmi:

i think it's less for "ID theft" in the sense of taking a card out of the mail or hacking info, but more for "oh, i lost my wallet sometime in the last hour and somebody just charged a $1200 TV at target".

i'd much rather be asked for my ID than have someone be able to use my card unchecked.