Today's Weird Li’l SIS: The Kroger Check Out
Date: 01-03-2014
Location: Aisle 7
Troy, MI
I really don’t want to hate people. Really. And I’m not talking about a specific person, either. I mean people in general. But sometimes I just hate them. Today is one of those times.
I was at Kroger today, needed to pick up two things for the office. The self-checkouts were all down, so I’m standing in line waiting to have my goods tallied up the trusted, old-fashioned way: by a union employee with a bad attitude and advanced scanner training. Anyway, I’m next in line, so I’m thinking it’s only gonna’ be a moment or two. No big deal.
Sometimes my optimistic stupidity even amazes me.
The woman checking out in front of me, who appeared to be somewhere between the ages of eighty-seven and one-hundred-and-dead was having a broken English dispute with the cashier. The broken English wasn’t even a nationality issue. I simply believe she was born before English was invented and, therefore, had to learn it as a second language. The dispute was over the price of okra. (I’ve tasted okra. I wouldn’t buy it, let alone fight for it.) The shopper was convinced that the sign back at the okra display clearly said $1.00 and the $1.39 ringing up at the register was obviously a bait and switch tactic that Kroger had cleverly engineered to derail her personal economy. She didn’t understand why the Kroger Company would go to such great lengths to attack her personal household. Regime change, I’m guessing.
Anyway, fast forward about thirty seven hours, and I’m still one-deep in line as Little Okra Annie, the cashier, and now the assistant to the assistant manager determine that the $1.00 sign she was sure she saw may not have been there today but maybe there a couple of weeks ago when she came in to buy strawberries for her grand niece’s birthday, who just turned nineteen and is studying to be a paralegal secretary, which is a good job to have because lawyers are always busy suing people so she’ll probably never get laid off, not like her brother, Randy, who had a real good job working with furnaces and air-conditioners, they were even willing to put him through school they liked him so much, but he got caught up in the drugs and they fired him, and now he just lays around playing those little “tickity-tickity” games on the television at his poor mother’s house, who also really likes her strawberry shortcake, and that’s why she remembered coming in and the okra sign said only $1, and she thought to herself that that was a really good price and…
AHHHH, SOMEBODY PLEASE JUST FUCKING SHOOT ME!!!
What makes this nightmare scenario even worse is that during the entire time that I was being subjected to the matinee showing of white trash theatre, I was also being periodically blasted by phantom bad breath from the next aisle over. It was so ungodly intense that my eyes would water as soon as the dark green cloud would come wafting over the Bic lighters and the US Weekly magazines. I don’t think I have ever experienced breath so foul in all of my life. Until now, I didn’t even think it was possible. And although morbidly curious, I honestly couldn’t even figure out which person in the neighboring line had been apparently eating road kill rolled in diapers all morning, because by the time my eyes cleared, everyone in the next aisle would be conveniently facing the other way.
People sometimes ask me why I don’t get a concealed weapons permit.
Because I would use it.
A lot.
m. karvinen
Date: 01-03-2014
Location: Aisle 7
Troy, MI
I was at Kroger today, needed to pick up two things for the office. The self-checkouts were all down, so I’m standing in line waiting to have my goods tallied up the trusted, old-fashioned way: by a union employee with a bad attitude and advanced scanner training. Anyway, I’m next in line, so I’m thinking it’s only gonna’ be a moment or two. No big deal.
Sometimes my optimistic stupidity even amazes me.
Anyway, fast forward about thirty seven hours, and I’m still one-deep in line as Little Okra Annie, the cashier, and now the assistant to the assistant manager determine that the $1.00 sign she was sure she saw may not have been there today but maybe there a couple of weeks ago when she came in to buy strawberries for her grand niece’s birthday, who just turned nineteen and is studying to be a paralegal secretary, which is a good job to have because lawyers are always busy suing people so she’ll probably never get laid off, not like her brother, Randy, who had a real good job working with furnaces and air-conditioners, they were even willing to put him through school they liked him so much, but he got caught up in the drugs and they fired him, and now he just lays around playing those little “tickity-tickity” games on the television at his poor mother’s house, who also really likes her strawberry shortcake, and that’s why she remembered coming in and the okra sign said only $1, and she thought to herself that that was a really good price and…
AHHHH, SOMEBODY PLEASE JUST FUCKING SHOOT ME!!!
What makes this nightmare scenario even worse is that during the entire time that I was being subjected to the matinee showing of white trash theatre, I was also being periodically blasted by phantom bad breath from the next aisle over. It was so ungodly intense that my eyes would water as soon as the dark green cloud would come wafting over the Bic lighters and the US Weekly magazines. I don’t think I have ever experienced breath so foul in all of my life. Until now, I didn’t even think it was possible. And although morbidly curious, I honestly couldn’t even figure out which person in the neighboring line had been apparently eating road kill rolled in diapers all morning, because by the time my eyes cleared, everyone in the next aisle would be conveniently facing the other way. People sometimes ask me why I don’t get a concealed weapons permit.
Because I would use it.
A lot.
m. karvinen
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