The Death of My brain

    So I was at the main till covering a break last wednesday. It was a regular day, not too busy, not too quiet, so when a customer arrived I thought nothing more than, “yay, a person to help pass the time quicker”. She was older, probably late sixties and she approached me with a single item. An A535 muscle pain rub. Good stuff by the way if you're one of them achy folk like myself. The purchase came to eight dollars, eighty cents. Small item, small purchase. I asked her how she would like to pay. She moves slowly but no matter, there isn’t anyone in line. She sluggishly pulls out a stack of various old business cards and starts shuffling through them and telling me all these options she has for payment. None contain actual currency. I can’t say I wasn’t severely taken aback by this, but I kept my calm, as there was still no one in line. 
I asked her “do you have any bank cards?” 
She gradually pulled her attention from her card stack to leisurely rummage through her wallet and proceeded to bring out two proper money cards.
“I have an American Express one and a BMO one”, she tells me, presenting each card. I ask her to choose so she can pay. A gentleman has now taken his place in line behind her. I tense up, but refrain from worrying too much as she is about to pay. That is until she asks me how the machine works. Her card lacked a tap feature so I explain where she has to put her card in, which she eventually does, then I tell her the next few buttons to press for the prompts. We get to where she needs to enter her PIN. I’m getting nervous solely because it appears she’s never paid for anything before so I wasn’t expecting her to know her PIN number. She didn’t. She said she didn’t know it, to which I replied, 
“Do you have a number you often use?” 
She gave it a go, entering something she used before a couple of times. The pinpad times out. This was my bad. I had set it to accept payment the moment she originally took out her bank cards, however, it took so bloody long to get to the actual act of paying that the machine had timed out. She’s now confused, I have to restart it, the fella has grown increasingly more impatient. When I set it up again, she tries tapping the exact same card and I have to remind her to insert it and try that PIN number from before. As she does that, the phone rings. Given this woman is so incredibly slow with her movements, I pick up the phone, answer the questions asked, and hang up by the time this lady realizes she doesn’t have a valid four digit number for that card. The line now has three people. 
“I have a BMO card.” she says, raising it from her pile of cards on my counter.
“Do you know the PIN?” I ask the question though I already have my doubts.
“They didn’t give me one.”
Part of my head implodes.
“We can’t use it if you don’t know your PIN number” I told her. She then brings up her American Express card that she just tried, “I have an American Express,” she tells me.
A mass of braincells commit suicide.
The fella behind her has surrendered and moved to the self checkout.
The phone rings again. I think about picking it up, but by now I’m too rattled by this lady and refuse.
I ask her if she has any other method of payment. She pulls up her stack of business cards and starts listing them. Four cards in, she tells me she has a library card. I start to shake internally. The phone rings again, I don’t answer. The fella comes to me and says that the price was incorrect on the item he wants to buy. I summoned a merchandiser over the intercom, my words came out rapidly and stressed. The lady is still shuffling through her cards, even as I explain the second issue to the merchandiser and send her to the self checkout. The line is at five people now. The gentleman had his problem resolved and went on his merry way. I am slumped on my countertop trying to puzzle what the hell I’m supposed to do with this woman who has no working cards, with a lineup growing ever longer, and no backup cash because we are so understaffed.
And then I see it, a flash of green within her wallet. I sound like a madman attempting a robbery when I frantically ask her, “DO YOU HAVE CASH? IS THAT CASH IN YOUR WALLET?” 
Even her taking the bills out is an excruciating process. She counts each one before announcing that she has seventy five dollars. I’m foaming at the mouth now but I continue to hold my calm as I reach for a bill, “I’m going to borrow this ten and give some of it back, okay?”
The motions of selecting a tender, typing in the price, opening the registrar, and giving out her change happens faster than that time Superman flew the opposite direction the planet's orbit to reverse time because Lois was getting crushed in a car by sand or dirt or something. Alas it doesn’t matter much as she takes another eternity to gather up her multitude of business cards, credit cards, and receipt, after she asked if she could take it. All I can do is say, “don’t forget your cards”, “the receipt? Yes, yes you can have it, it’s yours”, make sure you don’t forget those two things there”, here’s your item so it doesn’t get left behind”. I was just trying to herd her out of there as fast as I could. My body was trembling, my head had one brain cell left in it, and I still had five people to ring through.
When she left after what felt like years, the customers that followed right after praised me on my patience. Even the gent before was never angry, though a bit exasperated. The lady herself was in her own world so much that she didn’t give me any negative attitude. No one was mad. But holy did the adrenaline from being absolutely useless keep me hyper for the remainder of my shift. I was bouncing off walls the next few hours after that simply because I had suppressed so much stress, anxiety, fear, frustration during the eight to ten minutes of that transaction. My brain died that day but my calm lived long enough to push me through those painful minutes.