A Quick Trip to the Store

Me and the grocery store don't get along too well. Oh, sometimes we're okay. I'll walk in, buy groceries, and just leave. But sometimes...

Tonight I needed dinner so I thought I'd just pick up something. Just dinner, mind you. Nothing else. Nothing.

As I'm walking in the sliding doors of Giant, I realize my dress pants have come unbuttoned. Well, not unbuttoned, but the metal clasps had come undone. My pants are still up, but they are loose. Hmm...well, I'm not going to embarrass myself fastening them, so I'll just hope for the best. They are still zipped, right?

I grab a hand basket since I'm just picking up a couple things and away I go. That's when I remembered...I don't cook. Well, not without a recipe. What exactly am I going to just pick up?

That's when I start the roaming. The roaming is never good. Suddenly I'm seeing things I really need (but not really).

As I'm walking past the bakery section, these frosted cookies just wouldn't stop pestering me to buy them. I'm serious! I walked past these suckers twice. They were yellow and had sprinkles. They were happy cookies! Finally, I picked them up. Just to make the voices go away, of course.

Now my basket is getting heavier and that for some reason makes my pants start falling down a little. So there I am...walking through Giant, heavy basket on my left arm, my right hand trying desperately (and surreptitiously) to pull up my pants. My sweater is probably long enough to cover it but still. I get to the frozen food section and decide to pick up some meals for lunch. The only microwave meal I'll trust is Marie Callender and her meals come in these big boxes, which are now on top of my other crap.

This can't be good. And it's not.

Marie just won't stay where I put her. I'm walking kind of bowlegged down the aisles, and BANG, there goes another box. I stop. Pick it up. Pull up my pants. Keep walking. My arm is killing me. BANG. Stop. Pick up meal. Mumble out loud while inner (and just slightly more sane) voice reminds me that I am talking OUT LOUD and to please stop it. Pull up pants. At this point, I should just button them right? This is insane. But no, I can't do it. There are cameras. (Which, if someone was bored enough to watch, would have pretty entertaining tape, I'm sure).

Then I remembered J wanted snacks. I have no room in this basket. Marie is getting pissed again. She's about to jump. What am I going to do? I shuffle over to the snack section, and it's an entire aisle. My God!! What to pick? Pretzels. They work. So now I have a bag of pretzels teetering above Marie, who has just had it with me and the basket. She jumps once again.

Finally, I make it up to the front just to discover there is only one live cashier and the rest are self service registers. WTF? How many people got fired for these gadgets?!? And there are lines at every single one.

But the real problem is that I still have nowhere to put my basket and pants are at the critical level. Although, I did see one woman shopping in a pair of shorts with the word "EAGLES" plastered across her ass, which did make me feel a bit better. But I still wasn't enjoying the image of me looking like a teenage boy with my pants falling down.

Finally, this really nice woman tells me that one of the self service registers is open. After picking up Marie for the final time, I walk over to a smaller version of the self service registers but this one doesn't have the conveyor belt. It just has a place for two bags to fit. I start ringing up my stuff and bagging them. Well, soon the second bag is filled and I need to a new one. "HALT! DON'T TOUCH THAT BAG!" the machines says. Actually, it says something like, "Please do not pick up the bag until everything has settled to the bottom." Umm...WTF?

I soon realize you need to leave the bags where they are since they are being weighed. Of course I realize this when it tells me I made an error and that assistance will be on its way. Oh crap... I'm busted! The grocery cops are coming! I'm so glad they are doing away with cashiers.

Finally, some boy comes over and eyes my stuff before scanning something in. That's it. He doesn't say anything. Maybe he'd heard me talking to myself and didn't care if I stole something. When I go to pay, I use my credit card instead of my bank card, but I don't care. I just grabbed the first card I found in my wallet. I'm lucky I didn't try to scan in my insurance card or something. I even forget to use use my Giant Bonuscard! Who knows what kind of discount I could've gotten! But Marie is yelling at me from my bag, and it's just time to go...

I swear my arm hurt for hours after I got back from the store. The bad part is that all of this could've been avoided if I had just got a cart like a normal person! Oh, and buttoned my pants.

For me its the things in life that should be easy that give me the most problems. Do you need a report created and completed in two hours? No problem! You want me to pick something up from the store? Hmm...I don't know if I can do that. You might need to ask someone else.

But we did eat dinner and that's all that matters... Oh and I got cookies! Cookies make you forget everything.