Come On, Stop & Shop

I'm going to tell you a story. It has no hero, no story arcs, nor any character development, but every single word of it is true.

Today did not begin as a normal day. It should have, and in theory it did, but my job had me come in an hour early, for some unknown reason, to do the same stuff I was going to do anyway. I have a basic morons warehouse job. I get a packet of orders, put the products listed into boxes, and ship them to the rich dicks who bought them. Sometimes, they go to far away lands, like Australia, Fiji, or Wichita (seriously). Sometimes, they go to Pawcatuck. Seriously. Some wealthy knucklehead would rather spend the money to have something shipped to him from Waterford, then drive the 20 minutes to get it himself. It must be really nice to be so rich you can afford to be slothful and aloof.

Either way, I had to go in an hour early today. Again, I don't know why. Nobody tells me these things, most of the time I think they forget I exist. My job is more physically demanding that I thought it would be going into it. I work up a lather of sweat early in my day and maintain it, for the most part, until I get home. So I was sweating for 9 1/2 hours today, which does not make for a very happy me. I'm not that into sweating where it seems like a good idea for me to do it for the champions portion of my waking hours. So by the end of my day I was tired and unhappy.

But I still had more to do.

Every day, we drones of the warehouse get a measly 30 minutes lunch break where we can unwind just long enough to have to go back to work. I bring my lunch. I would rather get up 15 minutes earlier to make it than stress out about leaving the premises, finding food, and eating it within that short time span. Sue me, I like to relax a little. This morning marked the last of my luncheon preparation options, meaning I had to go to the grocery store when I got out of work to get more stuff to make sandwiches with. Not to mention the fact that I had to get sundry items for any other eating options I would like to embark upon any time soon. So I had to stop at the supermarket on my way home from work.

I've done this before. It's not that big of a deal. Everyone goes grocery shopping, we have to in order to survive. Unless we eat like college freshmen, in which case, have fun with your IBS and gross gut and butt problems, because I try to eat like an adult (late night snacking does not apply). Honestly, grocery shopping is NOT that big of a deal. Most of the time.

It began well, this trip to the Stop & Shop in Waterford. I go here because 1) it's on my way home and 2) the Shop Rite in New London is the epitome of human misery where every soul walking though that dump looks and acts like they just came from a wake. It's terrible in there and nobody should be forced to enter it's crusty walls. I got a good parking spot. I got my meat and cheese and tomatoes and a few other things without issue.

Then I went into the condiment isle. That's when things took a turn. As I pushed my cart up the row of mustards, dressings, and ketchups to the shelves holding the mayonnaise, I saw a man. He was tall, maybe 6 inches taller than I. Middle aged with the appropriate stomach paunch and  grey-white balding pattern of a man in his 50s. He had the "I don't give a fuck" grey sweatshirt and black track pants normally worn by someone who is there not on their own volition, but due to an emergency at home in which, apparently, mayonnaise was the only cure. He had his reading glasses poised at the tip of his nose, held in place by gravity in the front and Croakies in the back. For the uninitiated, Croakies are those elastic things that slide over the ends of the glasses arms so they don't slide off. My parents got them for me when I played sports as a child.

While examining the jars and squirt bottles of mayo, and while I am strolling comfortably towards him, this man lets out a groan. "Uuuuuuurrrgggggghhhhhh." He then began to spread his sport sandal clad feet apart. Slowly and simultaneously bending forward at the waist, ass creeping closer to the rows of relish behind him. Feet farther and farther apart. Ass dangerously close to blocking the other line of oncoming traffic. He reaches out for a jar. I am now standing there foolishly watching this scene from my future unfold. He reads the jar. He is exactly where I need to be. "Shit," I think to myself, "How is this going to work out?" He puts the first jar back with a pained grunt. His feet must be 2 yards apart at this point and his protruding posterior has now become a barrier for everyone in the isle. He reaches for another jar, and reads it, puts it back, completely oblivious to the traffic backing up on either side. I decide to make a rash decision. I abandon my cart and acquire my target squeeze bottle of mayo. I move in, closer than I ever wanted to be to this tragedy. He shoots me a look of disdain as I grab my selection before he was done. I shoot him a third of a grin, wheel around and go back to my cart. I turn around and get the good Hell out of the condiment isle.

Off to bread with me! HOLY SHIT THE BREAD ISLE SMELLS TERRIBLE! DID SOMEONE CRAP THEMSELVES WHILE EXAMINING BAGELS? Usually the bread section smells of cinnamon raisin bread, which is weird, but comforting and warm. Not like turds. Today it smelled like turds. WHY DOES IT SMELL LIKE TURDS?! I get my bread and get the good fuck out of there. I turn the corner to pasta. HOLY SHIT THE PASTA ISLE SMELLS TERRIBLE! DID SOMEONE CRAP THEMSELVES WHILE EXAMINING SPAGHETTI? I'm concerned. What happened here to make two rows of a supermarket reek of poop? No sense.

Until I turn the corner and see a gaggle of crust punk kids looking at...something? I don't know what they were getting, but it sure wasn't deodorant. There might as well have been a Pigpen style cloud of nasty stink engulfing them. Seriously punks are the worst smelling subculture out there. Take a shower, assholes, you make people hate you more by being filthy.

UGH.

Enough already. ENOUGH! I get the rest of my stuff, including deodorant, without much consternation, moving quickly in order to get out of there and go fucking home.

Now, Stop & Shop has two checkout options, the automated, shame-free checkout where you do it yourself, and the traditional option where some grumpy kid making minimum wage scans your shit and puts it in a bag. I forgot my Stop & Shop card, and the shame-free checkout won't give you the same discounts that the traditional way does where the clerk scans their card for you. I went with the traditional method of checking out. There was an isle with one guy buying some apples. PERFECT! This will be easy!

WRONG! This man, with a beginners mullet, was having a, we'll say, difficult time. His English was broken, Spanish being his primary language. No one was there to help him in his native tongue. This fact did not help things move swiftly. He wanted $8 worth of apples. That's literally all he wanted. Why he wasn't in the express lane will live as a mystery for generations, but still. $8 worth of apples. I did not by apples, but, I now know that 6 1/4 lbs of apples costs about $18, so we are looking at about $3/lb.

If this is starting to sound like a question from the math section of the SATs, that's because it might be, and it was in my head. This guy didn't understand that he could weigh the damn apples before he brought them to the register, do a little math in his head (math: also not a primary language for him, nor me, but even I can figure this one out), and get the proper amount of apples for his purposes. He was also trying to pay with something I didn't recognize. It was paper, like a check. He signed it, like a check. He gave it to the cashier, like a check. It was not a check. It had way too many boxes to fill out on it to be a check. It looked like a tax form there were so many boxes. It was crazy.

He filled out this form and handed it over, like I said. There was more than $8 worth of apples to be purchase, but he only wanted to spend that particular, and peculiar, amount on the apples. This was becoming a problem. This was also taking far too long.

There was a woman queued up behind me with twice as full a cart as I had. She was getting antsy. She asked the person running the (empty) check out line if she could go to that line. She couldn't. Not allowed. More than 12 items. Maybe more than 112 items (that cart was bursting). She asked someone else if they could open a new lane. The employee noticed the question, and walked off, never to be seen again. I shrugged at the woman behind me.

I was fucked. My stuff was piled on the conveyor belt waiting to be checked though and someone blocking me in. This is grocery store purgatory. The nightmare in front of my now had three people (THREE!) attending to it, none of which was getting anywhere to solve the case of $8 Worth Of Apples. I have been in this goddamned line for at least 15 minutes now, waiting quietly and being patient. I thought about cows. I thought about how docile they are and how they don't get pissed while waiting. Then I thought about how cows don't have to wait for anything. They eat, get milked, sometimes birth baby cows. Really, how much does a cow actually have to do? Nothing.

This is what has become of my life now, I thought. I have resigned myself to waiting in a line with my frozen goods melting on a conveyor belt, thereby ruining their integrity. I am here now, and this is where I am going to die. Eventually, Mr. $8 Worth Of Apples, along with 3 far more patient people than I, got their shit figured out and started to reweigh the apples. Taking one apple out of the bag at a time, they eventually got to the requisite weight, about 2 1/2 lb altogether. This could have all been avoided if this fucking moron just used one of the dozen scales available in the damn produce section.

Jesus Christ. Finally, after an hour of being inside the fluorescent Hell of Stop & Shop, I was able to check out. $119 later, I was finally able to get out of there and go home.

And have a beer while putting my goods away, finishing it while sitting on the toilet, mercifully able to relax for the first time since 7am, 13 hours prior.

Now I am on my second dose of Boddington's Pub Ale of the night, getting all of this off of my mind and chest, ready to at last move forward to some other disaster of daily adult life.

Still, all of this tumult was worth it to not have to go to Shop Rite.

SD