I am convinced that when I finally arrive in Hell, Satan will chain me to a grocery cart with one broken, squeaky wheel, assign me three gibbering imps to corral, and sentence me to an eternity of grocery shopping in Gehenna's Wal*Mart.
Yesterday was the first day back to a "normal" schedule -- or as normal as it ever gets around here. Daughter and Son off to respective schools, Toddlesaurus off to preschool; five minutes to savor a cup of coffee and groove on the silence of the house was mine, all mine!
Of course, after a week a and half of kids home, there was laundry, vacuuming and re-stocking the pantry. As it's easier to make way through the Giant without kids in tow, off I went. Everyone else was doing the same fucking thing.
I hate grocery shopping. I tend to whip through the store at 50 MPH, knocking stuff in to my cart, only getting what we absolutely require. It's a race -- my personal best door-to-door time is fifteen minutes for $200 (or two weeks') worth of groceries. That INCLUDED check-out time. ( I really, really hate shopping.) This means that I had to linger behind meandering carts, get caught in various traffic jams and wait at the deli counter for a good twenty minutes. The checkout line -- because why would you have more that two out of twelve open on a Monday morning? -- was ten people deep. By the time it was all done, I was at the store for an hour and a half, and was frazzled as Hell. (Have I mentioned how much I loathe shopping yet? I really do.)
When I got home, I had enough time to put everything away and go pick up Ginger Beastie. SO much for a relaxing morning!
A favored plaything of mine would be grocery store managers. To play this game, you need two phone numbers on your cell phone... the number for the store you usually shop at, and the customer service number of the company that owns the store.
ReplyDeleteHere's how you play: When the line is long, call the store you are at. Request the manager. When it gets on the phone, tell it which line you are in, and ask sweetly that it join you for a moment. When it gets there, tell it you want it to stay with you the WHOLE TIME you are waiting to get checked out, and if it doesn't you will spend that same time on the phone with the company loudly discussing all the faults you can find with the management of the store.
Either way, the store manager who caused you to wait will feel the pain he caused, and you will be entertained. Win/Win.
In rare cases, the manager will actually learn from the mistake.
This is why I do almost all of my grocery shopping as early as I can. I've been known to hit Walmart and Kroger at 3 AM if I know it's going to be a bad day for them. I can always take a nap.
ReplyDeleteWhat I hate are the idiots who have their carts along one side of the aisle and then step over to the other side of the aisle to peruse the stuff on the shelves, thereby blocking the entire aisle. Flamethrowers should be legalized for such occurrences.
ReplyDeleteSecond up are those who park their carts next to each other and catch up on about 18 months' worth of past events.
I despise grocery shopping. I just want to get in, find the crap I need and get out of there as fast as I can.
I was subjected to this very torture this morning, as it seems everyone else in the store was cranially challenged and had all the time in the world.
ReplyDeleteOh wait. I live in the Poconos. Never mind.
(Sigh)
What we need is a Peapod (http://www.peapod.com/consumerIndex.jhtml;jsessionid=15D0U0UYBVB52CQBD0WSF3Q)!
I agree with DB, I do mine early early or late at night... If I'd been in your shoes, I'd probably have left the cart (full) at the customer service desk, after telling them that is the amount of sales they lost because I don't have time to stand in line for 20-30 minutes waiting to checkout...
ReplyDeleteMy wife's with you guys: she hates shopping, too. My experience is different. I actually don't mind grocery shopping, for two very different reasons.
ReplyDeleteFirst: the store where I shop is new, clean, well-run, and has an excellent selection. Faced with a plethora of choices from the world's larder, I feel so... American. I shop, I linger, I wonder if this stuff would be any good. (Years ago, I ran into one of my math profs - a gentleman from originally from Poland) in the salad dressing aisle. He told me he knew he'd arrived in Amerca when he could choose from 168 different kinds of sald dressing. He was a mathematician - he'd counted.)
The second reason is, um, not so honorable. That store I mentioned is fairly close to Enormous State University. I do my shopping late on Saturday morning, when the college kids do their shopping also. In the summertime... well, for an old letch like me it's great. There are places that charge cover for a show like that.