Saturday, June 10, 2017
Food Fight
Last night Ian and I went to the grocery store, as we frequently do on Friday nights, because we are cool. (The REAL Friday Night Lights are in the produce section.) My mom needed a few items -- largely junk food, since she is the woman who raised me -- so she decided to come along. What followed was an amazing adventure.
As so often happens, the checkouts were packed. But Ian and I found one where there was just a nice-looking older couple and no bagger, which we favor, because we seem to be the only people in the greater Cook County area who understand that large, flat items go on the bottom of the bags. Plus bagging your own is kind of like an even lower-fi version of Tetris. So far, so good.
But the older gentleman asked us if we minded if they had two transactions, which of course we could not say no to for social politeness reasons. And the second transaction was for like fifteen gift cards, which had to be individually activated at the correct amounts. And of course the cashier messed up on entering the final amount and couldn't fix it, resulting in a call to management, which resulted in five minutes or so of us awkwardly pretending to read about Jennifer Aniston likely dying alone in Closer magazine until a manager who likely had to get up early for debate club practice arrived.
All of which would have been irritating but not that big of a deal had my mother not rapidly zipped through the express lane with her twelve items or less and stood losing her patience just past the elderly couple in question. Her ice cream was melting, she later explained. We offered her the keys to the car, but she instead insisted on walking home. And so we passed her as we drove back about five minutes later.
At least there wasn't a sexagenarian fist fight. Those never end well.
Last night Ian and I went to the grocery store, as we frequently do on Friday nights, because we are cool. (The REAL Friday Night Lights are in the produce section.) My mom needed a few items -- largely junk food, since she is the woman who raised me -- so she decided to come along. What followed was an amazing adventure.
As so often happens, the checkouts were packed. But Ian and I found one where there was just a nice-looking older couple and no bagger, which we favor, because we seem to be the only people in the greater Cook County area who understand that large, flat items go on the bottom of the bags. Plus bagging your own is kind of like an even lower-fi version of Tetris. So far, so good.
But the older gentleman asked us if we minded if they had two transactions, which of course we could not say no to for social politeness reasons. And the second transaction was for like fifteen gift cards, which had to be individually activated at the correct amounts. And of course the cashier messed up on entering the final amount and couldn't fix it, resulting in a call to management, which resulted in five minutes or so of us awkwardly pretending to read about Jennifer Aniston likely dying alone in Closer magazine until a manager who likely had to get up early for debate club practice arrived.
All of which would have been irritating but not that big of a deal had my mother not rapidly zipped through the express lane with her twelve items or less and stood losing her patience just past the elderly couple in question. Her ice cream was melting, she later explained. We offered her the keys to the car, but she instead insisted on walking home. And so we passed her as we drove back about five minutes later.
At least there wasn't a sexagenarian fist fight. Those never end well.
