Chapter 9: Judgement at the Checkout

Chapter 9: Judgement at the Checkout

Jedidiah Stone felt ten feet tall. The check was signed, the receipt was in his hand—a long, fluttering banner of victory—and the system had confirmed his triumph: 4,825 points. A king’s ransom. He’d done it. He’d beaten the ghost, not by playing its spooky, nonsensical game, but by overwhelming it with the undeniable logic of cold, hard commerce.

He watched as two young stock boys, their faces slick with sweat, began loading his monumental purchase onto a dolly to wheel out to his trailer. Buster, he thought with a swell of pride, would be eating well for months. The back forty would finally have a fence that could stand up to a stubborn heifer. He had turned a necessary expense into a decisive win.

He took a deep, satisfying breath, inhaling the familiar, comforting perfume of fertilizer and new rubber. He ambled back over to Cheyenne’s register, a magnanimous smile on his face. The other customers in line, a couple of familiar faces from the local cattlemen’s association, nodded at him, their eyes wide with respect for the sheer volume of his purchase.

“Alright, Cheyenne,” he said, his voice a low, confident rumble. “I’m gonna need to make one more little purchase.” He picked up a heavy-duty pair of wire cutters from the display rack by the register. “Go on and ring this up. And take it out of my points. Should have more than enough for these and a good bit left over.”

This was the victory lap. The moment he’d been dreaming of.

Cheyenne, happy to be handling a single, lightweight item, scanned the cutters. “Twenty-four ninety-nine,” she announced. She then turned to her screen to apply the reward. Her fingers tapped. A familiar, dreaded furrow appeared between her eyebrows. She tapped again, harder this time.

“Uh oh,” she muttered.

The triumphant feeling in Jedidiah’s chest instantly curdled into a cold, hard knot of dread. “What do you mean, ‘uh oh’?” he demanded, his voice louder than he intended. The men behind him shifted their weight.

“It’s… not working,” she said, her voice a small squeak. She pointed a trembling, black-nailed finger at the screen. “It says you don’t have enough points for a reward. It says you only have… sixty-three.”

The number hung in the air like a foul odor. Sixty-three. It was a mockery. An impossibility.

“Sixty-three?” Jedidiah roared, slapping his receipt down on the counter. “I just earned four thousand, eight hundred and twenty-five of ‘em! I got the proof right here! Your machine is broke!”

“It’s not broke, it’s the system,” she stammered, shrinking back from his fury. “I-I can get the manager.”

“You do that,” Jedidiah snarled, folding his arms across his broad chest. He was a granite statue of indignation. He would not be moved. He would not be denied.

A moment later, Dave, the store manager, appeared. He was a man in his late thirties with a neat side-part and a perpetually harried expression, as if he’d spent his entire career putting out small, nonsensical fires. “Jedidiah,” he said, forcing a placating smile. “What seems to be the trouble?”

“The trouble, Dave,” Jedidiah said, pointing a thick finger at the register, “is that this machine of yours is a thief. It just gave me nearly five thousand points, and now it says I’ve only got sixty-three. I want my discount.”

Dave’s smile tightened. He stepped behind the counter and nudged Cheyenne aside, his own fingers moving over the touchscreen with practiced authority. He scanned Jedidiah’s loyalty card. He looked at the history. His professional calm began to visibly crack at the edges. He scrolled. He squinted. He leaned so close to the monitor his nose was almost touching it.

“Well, this is… unusual,” Dave said, clearing his throat. “Jedidiah, I see the large point deposit from your purchase. That’s all correct. But… it looks like the points were redeemed. Just… just a minute or two ago.”

Jedidiah felt a chill that had nothing to do with the store’s air conditioning. “Redeemed? I’ve been standing right here!”

“I know,” Dave said, his own confusion mounting. “But the system log is very clear. It was an online redemption. All 4,800 points. For… product vouchers.”

The ghost. The troll. It had been waiting. Lying in ambush. It had seen his grand charge and, in the blink of an eye, had stolen the victory from right under his nose. Jedidiah’s rage was so pure, so potent, it left him speechless.

“This is insanity,” Dave muttered, more to himself than to anyone else. He looked up, his eyes pleading for a rational explanation that did not exist. “You know what? I’m going to call the corporate customer care hotline. They have more detailed access logs. We’ll get to the bottom of this.”

He picked up the phone at the register and put it on speaker. The familiar hold music filled the now-silent checkout area. The other customers were no longer impatient; they were a captive audience to the strangest drama to ever unfold in Aisle 3.

A warm, placid voice suddenly filled the air. “Thank you for calling Tractor Supply Customer Care, this is Brenda speaking.”

Jedidiah’s blood ran cold. It was her. The lady who knew about the gorilla.

Dave quickly explained the situation, his voice strained with managerial desperation. He relayed the customer’s name, the massive purchase, the sudden disappearance of nearly five thousand points, and the generation of a series of vouchers.

There was a pause on the other end of the line, followed by the soft sound of typing. Then, a sigh. It was a sigh that contained multitudes—of boredom, of disbelief, and of something that sounded suspiciously like delighted recognition.

“Ah,” Brenda’s voice said, now lacking its robotic customer-service sheen. “The account for [email protected]. Yes. I’m familiar with this one.”

“You are?” Dave asked, his face a mask of confusion.

“Sir,” Brenda said, her voice now directed at Jedidiah, calm and clear over the speakerphone. “I can confirm your points were redeemed. In a rapid series of transactions that began at 4:17 PM, a total of 4,800 points were converted into twenty-four separate product vouchers.”

“Vouchers for what?” Jedidiah choked out, dreading the answer.

Brenda paused, as if for dramatic effect. “The vouchers are for twenty-four three-pound bags of Purr-fect Catch Cat Treats. Salmon flavor.”

A collective gasp went through the checkout line. One of the cattlemen let out a snort that he tried to turn into a cough.

Dave just stared, his mouth hanging slightly open. As a manager, he was bound by corporate policy. A voucher was as good as cash for the specified product. The system was never wrong. He turned to one of the stock boys who was loitering nearby, mesmerized by the scene.

“Kevin,” Dave said, his voice flat and robotic. “Go to Aisle 7. Get… get twenty-four bags of the Purr-fect Catch cat treats.” He paused, his brain struggling to process the logistics. “You’ll need a pallet.”

Jedidiah could only watch in stunned, horrified silence as the young man scurried off and returned minutes later with a pallet jack. On it was a mountain of bright pink and silver bags, a monument to his ultimate humiliation. The stock boy wheeled it to the front and parked it right next to Jedidiah’s legitimate purchases.

The sight was so profoundly, surreally awful that Jedidiah felt his soul leave his body. He was a ghost, hovering over the scene of his own demise.

But the final blow was yet to come.

“Is there anything else I can help you with, Dave?” Brenda’s voice asked, a hint of genuine, professional curiosity in her tone.

“I… I don’t think so,” Dave stammered, still staring at the mountain of cat food. “Unless you can explain… this.”

“Well,” Brenda said thoughtfully. “There was one final note added to the account’s pet profile, right after the redemption was completed. Perhaps it will shed some light on the situation.”

“A note?” Dave asked weakly. “What does it say?”

Brenda cleared her throat. Her voice was steady, professional, and delivered the line with the sincerity of a doctor reading a diagnosis.

“The note says: ‘Nigel’s babies are due. They are very hungry.’”

Silence. A deep, profound, and absolute silence fell over the checkout aisle. Dave looked from the speakerphone to the pallet of cat treats, and then to Jedidiah Stone’s ashen face. The pieces, however insane, clicked into place in his manager’s brain. He was just a man trying to do his job. And his job, at this moment, was to provide comprehensive customer service based on the information provided.

He looked Jedidiah squarely in the eye, his expression one of complete, earnest sincerity.

“Well, sir,” he said, his voice ringing with a bizarre corporate compassion. “I see. On behalf of all of us here at Tractor Supply, I do hope the delivery goes well.”

That’s when the laughter started. It began as a choked snort from the back of the line, then a giggle from someone else, and then, in a cascade of shared, unrestrained delight, the entire checkout area erupted. Jedidiah Stone, a respected man of the soil, stood defeated. Flanked by a fortune in fencing supplies and a mountain of cat treats for a phantom gorilla’s imaginary, hungry babies, he was engulfed in a tidal wave of public ridicule. The war was over. He had lost.