Paul reached into a clearance bin at Kmart and cut himself on a rotary blade. Blood everywhere, fingertips flying like chunky confetti, you can imagine the scene (oh wait, we just did for you). He went to the customer service desk to ask for help and was greeted with an annoyed store manager who was concerned about two things only: whether or not there was any “contaminated area” to clean up, and getting Paul to fill out some paperwork for insurance purposes. What she wasn’t concerned about was helping Paul in any way, even after he explicitly asked for help, as the following exchange makes clear.

Mgr: What happened?

Me: I cut myself on a blade in your clearance aisle that was loose in a bin. This one. Do you have a first aid kit?

Mgr: That stuff is in the pharmacy, and it’s closed right now. Did you bleed anywhere?

Me: Uh…maybe? probably?

Mgr: ::calls someone on a walkie or something who then comes up and they spend like 5 minutes trying to figure out where their bloodborne pathogen cleanup kit is::

Me: So. Can I have something? You don’t have anything at all?

Mgr: We don’t have any way of getting into the pharmacy.

Paul excused himself to clean up in their public bathroom, which we pray to all the gods is more sanitary than the one at the Kmart at Astor Place in NYC. When he came back, the manager made him write down a statement on the back of an unrelated sheet of paper because she couldn’t find the right form. At this point, an employee brought him bandages and Neosporin. But shouldn’t every store have a basic first aid kit of some sort?

Highlights were

• the woman saying “oh no, don’t put that there, we don’t want to contaminate more stuff” when I was handling the things I was buying. Which I still bought.
• Not getting a copy of the paperwork I signed, which I realized in hindsight.
• Having them be so blatantly concerned about their procedures and completely, totally not about me.

So yeah. I was pissed, I mean. Things happen. They didn’t put the cutter there, most likely it was some minimum wage, dissatisfied person doing reshopping and wanting to get home and just chucking it into the clearance box, or some trashy customer taking it out of the package for some inane reason. But at least give a glimmer of “whoops, sorry about that, our bad”. C’mon.

“Man, K-Mart blows.” [Vartan] (Thanks to Ben!)

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