More SERIOUS Problems

I went to the grocery store yesterday. This is not a chore I find particularly objectionable, like ironing or bathing regularly or being pleasant to people I don't like. I didn't have to buy anything urgently. I wasn't late in arriving at the grocery store and didn't have anywhere I had to be when I was finished shopping. I wasn't out of milk and didn't need more milk RIGHT NOW! like if snow is in the forecast. Then I rush out and buy as much milk as my refrigerator can hold so that I have plenty of milk to pour down the sink when it sours. I don't even like milk. Milk is squeezed from cow udders.


Once I had collected all of the items that I thought I needed, many of which will spoil or rot or suffer from a bug infestation, I encountered the check out lanes. If you added up all of the accumulated frustration I have built up over the years in check out lanes and released it all at once I would have a fatal myocardial infarction. And I include traffic as a kind of sub category of waiting in check out lanes; basically I'm behind people who aren't as smart as me who are impeding my progress just to be mean to me, Horseface Steve.


I avoid the express lanes as a general rule, where some felon with 16 items is queuing up directly under the "15 Items or Less" sign. The self check out sounds like a good idea but I always get bogged down on some item I have to look up or that doesn't scan properly or have a working bar code. I don't know if I have mini bananas, organic bananas, fair trade bananas, or just regular bananas. They all look exactly the same to me. I have absolutely no idea how they get information embedded into a few black lines, either.

I usually end up choosing the line with the fewest people in it AND manned by the youngest cashier. No offense to old people like me, but I want to see those nimble young fingers flying when I'm trying to get out of the check out line. The pleasant young man that I choose to be my check out guy was too pleasant. He talked to me pleasantly instead of getting my stuff scanned and into a bag. He was also tasked with bagging my stuff which further slowed him down. He placed each item carefully in the bags. Very carefully.


Finally, I suggested that I would be happy to bag the groceries, assuming that this would free him up for some world class scanning. Normally, I don't do this because I'm watching the register like a hawk. When my attention is diverted I seem to get charged $8.99 a pound for organic, free-trade, mini bananas. This time my total focus on speed bagging blinded me to the fact that my $2 bag of onions rang up at around $10, which put me immediately into the Customer Service line, where no customer service was in effect, that I could see. They gave me my $10 back but kept the bag of onions because of some bar code defect.

"You can run back and get a bag with a bar code on it," the woman offered, unhelpfully. I successfully fought back the urge to tell her where she could place each and every onion in the bag.

I don't really have any problems is my main problem.