Musings at Altitude

After church yesterday, my wife, my daughter and I stopped by Walmart to get some keys made to the house.  For my wife and I, our mission was simple – get to the hardware section, get 2 keys made from one master and 1 key made from the other, and get back on schedule with anything and everything else planned for this particular Sunday.  For my daughter though, Walmart was a grand adventure.  For her, the two most important things in the world existed at Walmart – hockey cards and girl stuff (this is a very broad category of stuff that is very specific to girls – I’m sure you know what I’m talking about). 

Within seconds of passing through the door and by the greeter, we split – thank goodness we split.  My wife and I made a beeline to the back left corner of the store where we assume the key making kiosk resided.  We asked Mike (the Walmart hardware dude) for two of one key and one of the other and Mike started the process, and a very simple process it was.  Mike put the uncut key in the bottom “grinder” and put the master key in the top to be matched during the grind.  The grinding began, and sure enough we could hear the key being made.  When the grinding and cutting stopped, Mike took out the new key, matched it to the old key, and grunted in satisfaction as he approved of the match. 

Mike repeated this process with the second cut against the same master, and during the cutting process, our 14 year old came bouncing up with this in hand:

 

Now Mike got quite a chuckle out of this $8 makeup bag, as our 14 year old talked about how functional this $8 bag was, how cool it was even though it was stripes and not polka dots (is that how you spell “polka dots”?), and how this bag as cool as it was could be used as a purse as well as a makeup bag.  As Mike listened to this bubbly report on this $8 bag, he pulled key 2 out of the grinder and grunted disapproval as the cut didn’t match the master.  He shoved key 2 back into the grinder again, listened for the grinding to prove there was an error, and sure enough, the key ground down proving the error in the first grind.  He pulled key 2 out and grunted approval after the second grind.

As he started key 3, Mike talked about how his wife tended to bring home sales items like that makeup bag too, and he kept smiling at our 14 year old as she kept talking during the third grind.  When we finished, Mike asked if we wanted to pay there, and my 14 year old said “we still have to get hockey cards!”  That brought new chuckles from Mike as he wished us well and we went on our way.

We completed our mission at Walmart as our 14 year old got her box of 60 hockey cards and we went on home.  Just to be safe, we went straight to the front door to check out the new keys, and sure enough, neither of the two keys made from the house master worked.  Even with the grunts of satisfaction, and the re-grinding when the errors were visible, neither new key worked.  Now I blame this on that 14 year old, who in her bubbly description of how flexible and useful that makeup bag was completely distracted Mike when he knew there were errors in the grinding and cutting process.  Getting keys made is a very serious business process.  Having a very distracting 14 year old with you during that key making process brings disaster every time.  Lesson learned – no 14 year olds when getting keys made.

PS. Since life is all about assessing blame, let’s look at the potential culprits in this case: (1) the machine – Mike didn’t do anything but put the key in the duplicating machine and wait for the grinding to stop; (2) the attendant, Mike – maybe, just maybe, there was a “insert into slot” error by Mike in placing the key into the machine; (3) my wife or I – couldn’t be us…we were just standing there; (4) the bubbly one – creating the smiles and the distraction.  So we have 4 potential blamees…I choose the bubbly one!