"dream great dreams and find the courage to live them"

-erwin mcmanus

Friday, October 3, 2008

yes, i'm american. please rip me off.

i just went down to this kid's toy shop (kind of like that, anyways..) because they also have a copy machine. we needed to make copies of signs to put up in the park to advertise our program for tomorrow afternoon.

now, i went to this shop once before with giuseppe and he got copies for 7 cents each. i went by myself later that same day and got copies for 7 cents each. but at the end of my interaction with the woman, she asked me a question and i didn't understand what she was asking. that clued her in that i wasn't a native and i didn't speak the language.

so i went in today, bringing exact change for the 7 copies i needed at 7 cents each. when she was done, she told me it was 70 cents. that means 10 cents per copy. i tried to communicate that i knew it was supposed to be 7 cents each, but i didn't know the right phrases to use. argh... i wasn't happy.

why do they think they can rip me off just because i don't know the language? i still know my numbers, thank you very much. i'm not happy. and it makes me all the more motivated to learn italian so i can tell that woman next time i go in that i know it's only 7 cents per copy.

did losing 21 cents really make me that frustrated? hmm...

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