Grocery store lines
And then I get to another pet peeve, and this one seems relegated to women: When you have 500 items in your grocery cart that has taken 15 minutes to check out, why do you act like it’s such a surprise that you actually have to PAY for them? The cashier turns to you and says, “That’ll be $376.54 please”, and then, as though you’ve forgotten how this works (and to your credit, maybe you have- that volume of groceries only needs purchase a month at a time. If that’s the case, ignore the remainder of this rant), you scramble in that duffle bag you call a purse to find the mini purse inside that contains your credit cards and cash. If you’re over 78, you go for the cash and the coin purse (see above); if younger you then swipe your credit card, but of course because you’re rattled so you swipe it with the magnetic stripe facing the wrong way, which leads to several moments of consternation until the cashier politely reminds you that you really need to turn the card around to get it to work. All the while you continue your conversation about your grandchildren (over 78) or children, swipe the card again, look confusedly at the screen until the cashier reaches over and punches the relevant buttons, and then finally complete the transaction. But do you leave? NO. You have to complete your story about your grandchildren (over 78) or children. Somehow, you’ve lost that peripheral vision that would show 8 people glaring at you waiting to get the heck away from there. The cashier, having been conditioned by the Grocery Store Powers That Be, are forced to listen politely, with that plastic smile and glassy stare until you finish your story. God help me to recognize that smile when I’m speaking to someone, it’s a sure sign to wrap it up and move along.
Have you considered reaching into your duffel bag while waiting for the person in front of you to finish their story of their grandchildren (over 78) or children, getting your mini-purse, reaching for your credit card, and then when your turn comes to check out swipe the card before the cashier has finished checking you out?
Maybe it’s a loneliness thing- the only bright spot in your day is the time you spend in human interaction with the cashier. Maybe grocery stores would improve the line throughput (and thus their profits) to create a SLOW Lane- the opposite of an express lane- for those people who just want to take their time about going grocery shopping. The other lanes would be freed for those whose items feature beer, chips, salsa, and ice, and whose intent is to buy and go as fast as they can.
Wow- and that brings me to express lanes. Since I’m bitching about grocery stores, what is it about people with 30 items thinking they should use the express lane? I’m OK with 16, 18, maybe even 20 items, but you’ve got to draw the line somewhere. The penalty for disobeying the “Fewer than 15” rule ought to be getting sent to the Slow Lane.
And then we have this weird thing, in California at least, called the self-check. The concept is wonderful: you stand in front of a machine and scan your purchases, hearing a pleasant “bip” when you successfully scan the item. Things like vegetables have this look-up thing with pictures on it so you can find the thing you want to buy, and magically it calculates the cost. We fast-movers- have you heard of the “quick and the dead”? “Quick” in the old days meant “alive”, and so quicksilver (mercury) meant “alive silver”, which is about as ironic as it gets given the toxicity of mercury, but I digress. We fast-movers line up at the self-check, or at least DID, until the wonderful State of California decided that purchasing the beer in the fast-mover’s diet (see list above) required a manual transaction supervised by a real cashier. I suppose that too many 12 year-olds were buying said six-pack and going on a binge. The lines for self-check plummeted dramatically after that.