Once again, I picked the wrong day and time to "pop in" to the grocery store. Tuesday at 2pm is, apparently, Thoughtless Asshole Hour at County Market (which, by the way, is about as "county" as NASA). There were several open check-out lanes, but all of them had lines, and only one had a cashier actually scanning items. The others were at a stand-still because their cashiers were busy waiting on price checks, running to fetch cigarettes from the taxable sin vault, or paging someone over 21 to come approve someone's bottle of Shiraz. Stupidly, I chose the lane that seemed to be operating normally. I know better than to do this - not only from years of shopping for food but from years of merging into the only moving lane of highway traffic just to find myself at a dead stop, watching an ADD five year old in the car ahead of me conduct an improv puppet show with an Elmo doll and a box of Kleenex.
Children can be forgiven for failing to notice when nearby adults wish them dead, but people old enough to buy their own food have no excuse. Ahead of me is a sweet little old lady with two items: 1) a produce bag containing 3 small potatoes and 2) a loaf of Wonder Bread. Ahead of her is a woman of about 40 (kids in tow, of course) with a cartload of cookies, chocolate flavored cereal, and jugs of neon-red sugar water. And coupons. But she doesn't have a tidy file of coupons stacked and ready to scan. She simply hands the cashier the entire circular she grabbed on the way in the store, forcing the cashier to flip through the pages, find the corresponding coupons, rip them out one by one, and scan them.
While this is going on, the little old lady makes small talk with her about her kids. I pretend to be interested in the magazine rack (sorry Cosmo, but my erogenous zones are not a secret) while quietly hoping she and her future Type II Diabetic kids die in a mini-van fire in a chain-store parking lot. Finally, it's the little old lady's turn, and I'm home free. But wait, those potatoes rang up at 59 cents a pound, and the sign clearly said 49 cents.
She has half a pound of potatoes.
Are you FUCKING kidding me? my inner voice says. I mean, don't get me wrong, you're obviously mentally acute and pretty spry for your age, but do you really have time for this shit? Is that time worth less to you than a nickel?
The potatoes issue gets sorted out. Of course, the sweet little old lady didn't read the monitor right. Here comes the bread. Beep. "That was marked a dollar, I think." This time she volunteers to check herself and discovers - after what seems like 84 minutes - that she picked up the wrong loaf. It wasn't Wonder Bread on sale, it was Equally Shitty But Similar-Looking Brand Bread. Little old lady produces a dollar bill then proceeds to dole out the remaining 37 cents in as many coins as possible.
When I finally check out, I notice that every line I avoided is already gone and all the other lanes are empty. By the time I walk to the door, I've forgotten where I parked, what the weather is like, and even what day and time it is. It's like the missing time you hear about in alien-abductee stories. I don't know exactly where I've been, but I'm pretty sure I've been violated.
1 comments:
I had a similar moment in the very same store, the very same day. I arrived at 4:30pm, probably 30 seconds after you found your way home. My experience, that almost had me preferring surprise forced entry, was more along the line of sideways shopping carts blocking every aisle. The owner then glancing up to see me need to get through, then back to decide which stool softener was cheaper, yet trustworthy, without budging the path-obstructing vehicle. That along with crying, mucus-dripping children galore, slow-moving geriatrics with walkers, and fortysomething stay-at-home moms with coupons trailing them at every turn, who pick the end of the work day to come further clog the arteries of "the market," rather than miss Dr. Phil and shop when the store is empty. Finally, I have my taco seasoning packet, head of lettuce, and toilet paper and begin my 20 minute wait in line. The checker never so much as looked me in the eye, or even said my total aloud, just stared and waited for the card to swipe. Fortunately, she incoherently mumbled my new total of Max Reward Points (whatever those are) in some jibberish language, and began rudely checking out the next person in the line out of hell.
Fuck County Market. Fuck Walmart. Fuck.
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