The Dollar General (Part 1)

So last week, as Haruna and I finished up another trip to the Japanese client on the island of Kauai, she told me she needed to immediately fly from Hawaii to London for a meeting with a potential new UK client.

The earliest flight we could find departed out of Vegas to JFK... and then from JFK to Heathrow.

However, as the flights out of Hawaii to Vegas were completely sold out that day, the only solution that she had was to take a red-eye flight out of Honolulu to LA, then drive from LA to Vegas in time to catch that flight.

Unfortunately as Haruna is terrified of driving on the mainland, (she thinks everyone will start shooting if you cut them off ... which is more/less accurate), I had to act as the driver to get her to "Sin City".

Both of us arrived in LA at around 7AM and we were half-delirious. We then immediately got a rental car and hopped on I15 North towards Las Vegas.

About 2 hours into the drive, we arrived into Victorville and decided to get some drinks and food.

We stopped at a gas station to refuel and to get some drinks. But as the gas station didn't have "SPARKLING WATER" which is what Haruna wanted, she asked if we could go to another store. I saw a Dollar General stop across the street and drove there... which was a BIG MISTAKE.

For those of you that don't know what Dollar General is .. it's the "poor-man's" Walmart. Whereas Walmart does have a selection of both cheap more expensive stuff, Dollar General only has the cheap stuff.

Most of its customers are straightforward, working class folks that are pretty much just "getting by"..

As a consequence the drink selection there tend to be on the high-sugar/high caffeine type. Similarly, the food selection tends to be high-calories/high fat. Moreover, the store does not have any fresh fruit or vegetables.

I didn't really think about things when I picked this place (which I should have); as we parked the rental car, I saw a few bikers and laborers at the entrance. Everyone then stopped and looked at Haruna as she got out with her $30K Hermes bag and $5K Chanel shoes...

OH JESUS CHRIST I THOUGHT TO MYSELF THIS MAY NOT HAVE BEEN SUCH A GOOD IDEA.

Haruna walks into Dollar General and scans the drink aisle. She then walks up to the cashier.

"Excuse me do you have any sparking water?" (and remember Brits pronounce water W-O-TER, which sounds even more snobby), asked Haruna.

The cashier was an elderly lady in her sixties. She looked like she was in NO MOOD for such nonsense.

"Missy, we don't have anything THAT FANCY here."

Haruna then said something even shocked me ...

"Oh that's all right! I don't need anything fancy like Voss (expensive Norwegian water); PERRIER would be JUST FINE ..."