Towels and SALES!

I've won the domestic lottery; I've encountered my Retail Score of the Year for 2006; nothing will top this! Eight 100% cotton supersoft Ralph Lauren bath towels (plus three washcloths) on sale at Macy's, totaling THIRTY TWO DOLLARS.

Last year our towels were green, kind of dark peacock green. The color looked good with our brown and white Marimekko shower curtain. A few months ago I decided that this year's towels would be orange, which also looks great with brown. Dear Daniel and I both love the color orange, and I love buying towels all at once, which for me (for two people) means buying eight bath towels. I don't like keeping around a bunch of threadbare, mismatched bath towels - it just annoys me. So when I buy eight new bath towels, I get rid of six of the old ones and relegate one old one to a spot under the sink for household cleanup emergencies, and one to the trunk of the car for car cleanup emergencies. Anyhow, the Towel Year is not up yet for a few more weeks. So I went to Macy's (for a new shower curtain liner, actually, not for towels) and saw the orange Ralph Lauren towels I've been wanting. I noticed there were no hand towels and only three washcloths, although there were plenty of bath towels.
"Is this color going to be discontinued?" I asked the Macy's salesperson.
"Well, they're all going to be... eventually," she said, nastily.
"Really? So, even WHITE gets discontinued?" I asked. I was very polite, but of course I was bitchily trying to make a point.
"Well, you're not asking about WHITE, you're asking about INDIAN PAINTBRUSH," she said witheringly, snatching the bitch crown right off my head and settling it firmly upon her own.
Well, color me corrected. I figured the lack of hand towels and washcloths meant bye bye to "Indian Paintbrush" orange, so I grabbed eight towels and the remaining washcloths, calculating the total in my head to be around $170. (Sometimes you have to do what you have to do, even if it's two weeks sooner than you had budgeted for it. Otherwise my whole color scheme for the upcoming Towel Year would be ruined. And I couldn't get any other brand because I'm trying to avoid buying things made in sweatshops, and of all the orange towels I found, only the Ralph Lauren ones were made in the USA. That doesn't ensure non-sweatshop, I know, but a three dollar towel made in Bangladesh almost certainly guarantees sweatshop labor in my mind.)
Since I only had $40 cash I handed her my Visa ATM card and she did her thing and I glanced at the thing before signing it; the total was $32.47, and that included the shower curtain liner! I thanked her (I guess she had a change of heart, because she tied the top of the bag into a little handle and said, "This will make it easier to carry,") and then I practically sprinted out of the store, fully expecting to be tackled by security guards on my way out. I drove away sweating slightly and feeling like I'd done something really bad. I didn't even look at the receipt till I got home a few minutes ago, and all the things I bought are on the receipt. I'm thinking maybe it was some computer error, because the bath towels show up at a lower price than the teeny tiny washcloths I bought. Gotta love it. Hooray for modern civilization's total reliance on the computer! Hooray for apathetic employees!