Now, I wrote a tweet about this earlier. Usually, when I tweet I ask myself two things:
- Is this worthy of tweeting about?
- Would this be better suited for a fully-developed blog entry?
First of all, I realize how ridiculous a name for a supermarket King Kullen is. I think it just comes with the territory, though. I mean, Food Lion? Super Stop & Shop? Supermarkets just are killin' it when it comes to nomenclature. Second of all, I know this lady could read because she was reading the OK! Magazine with Tiger Woods' Rachel Mistress on the cover. Which made me wonder, since when is she his? Since when does she belong to him, because in my mind, when you're a mistress or a down-low fuck buddy, you have no legal standing whatsoever. And wait a second, when is anybody anybody's? Even married women, who have traditionally been owned by men (hey - I don't believe in it, don't look at me) aren't owned by men anymore. So, why does OK! Magazine think it's okay to imply ownership over this woman? Probably because they paid her $10,000 to show them text messages and sit on the front cover in her home (which they advertised as a selling point: "Look inside her home!" which might as well have said "See a homewrecker's home and how nice it is!") and with that $10,000 she also gave away her dignity. Cause she didn't lose that when she was fucking a married man.
How did this become about Tiger Woods? Oh, right. Because everything is about Tiger Woods because it's December 2009. Silly me.
10 items or less. Right. Okay. Shopping cart full of groceries. Checkout clerk looking hastily. I could read the expression in her eyes: "Motherfucker! Not another one of these old ladies who I can't yell at because I might give them a heart attack! But goddamn, do I wanna yell. Can you read, bit--"
She proceeds to check the old lady out. Not like sleazy, "how you doin'" check out, like "beep... beep... beep... beep" check out. Now, I feel for Checkout Clerk. Having been in the customer service industry (is supermarket clerk even in that industry?), I fully understand that you are essentially a modern-day slave. Which is not to diminish the suffering of actual modern-day slaves. Damn, this entry is a hot mess. I can't even try to be PC. Fuck it. Customer service is modern-day slavery, end of story. Where a normal person would reach a breaking point and say "Look, motherfucker, you need to read the sign which is conveniently lit up for your convenience, and see that it says '10 Items or Less,' not 'Whatever the Fuck Falls Into My Grocery Cart,' or 'I Don't Know How to Count,'" modern-day slaves have to say "Do you have your Kullen Card?" and force a smile, even though all they really want to do is brandish a sharp object and glare menacingly.
My total frustration and lack of patience had absolutely nothing to do with the fact that this was my second trip out of the office to fetch ingredients that I forgot for a dessert I was signed-up to bake for our staff holiday party. This isn't about me, okay? This is about idiots who don't understand what "10 Items or Less" means, or as my co-worker Nick pointed out, that "10 Items or Less" is poor grammar and it should actually be "10 Items or Fewer."
After the stupid OK! Magazine reader in front of me was done checking out, I looked at the checkout clerk, exasperated written all over my face as I handed her the one (count it) one item I intended to purchase. I looked at her, hoping to create some witty reparte about stupid fucking idiots and I said "I bet that gets annoying."
She looked at me, perplexed, and said "what?"
"People who don't understand the concept of the Express Lane..."
"Oh... Haha. Yeah. We have self-checkout, though. You should have just gone there," she said, as she pointed to the line right beside me.
You know what, Checkout Clerk? You're totally right. I could have. I should have. I fuckin' would have. But that does not mean that the woman in front of me was not an imbecile and selfish person for choosing to disobey the laws of the supermarket. And maybe I would have noticed the self-checkout had I not been enthralled in a (self-contained) philosophical debate about the ethics of OK! Magazine and their choices in cover stories, but it still doesn't make what greedy, illiterate Grandma did okay.
And when I pondered this disturbing event more later on in the day, I came to a startling conclusion. I am that person. When I was in the service industry, I hated that person. The one whose life was going so fucking fantastically until the moment when they had the worst service in the history of the world and it ruined everything.
Like the time when I was a server, and our restaurant didn't carry the salad dressing that one of our guests wanted. And once I was finally allowed to go through the list of what we did have, after he went through all four of his original choices, he sighed dramatically and replied "Ugh... No dressing." He then proceeded to literally pout and sulk for the entire meal, not speaking a single word to me the rest of the evening. Seriously. When I checked to see how their meal was, his wife looked at me, eyes pleading, saying "We're fine..." I couldn't believe that every single thing in this man's life had gone perfectly as planned until the moment he came in to our restaurant and we weren't serving the salad dressing that he had been waiting for for an eternity... and I had ruined it all.
Or like the time when a gentleman came in to the same restaurant thirty minutes before we closed and ordered a meal that included fresh-cut french fries. I informed him that we had literally just ran out of french fries, and he couldn't believe me. He absolutely could not believe that a restaurant could run out of french fries. It's not as if I was like "Sorry, we don't serve that dish right now." It was component of a dish with two sides and an entree. Why the fuck would I just choose the most delicious part of the dish to exclude? More importantly, why the hell would I lie? Because I know that letting a customer down is going to ensure me a 30% tip? The man wasn't satisfied until I had our chef come out into the dining room to explain the situation.
Or like the time when a woman came into Starbucks when I was working and one of my friends was training a co-worker. The woman, in typical suburban snob fashion, recited her drink faster than anyone could even remotely understand. The trainee asked for clarification twice (TWICE!!!) and the woman rolled her eyes, speaking to the trainee as if she were incapable of understanding simple English, which clearly wasn't the case, she was just having trouble with Starbucks English, which makes no damn sense anyhow. My friend, the trainer, clarified "Sorry ma'am, she's just training." The woman looked at my friend, rolled her eyes again, and made a comment under her breath about my friend being a lesbian. Totally outrageous, especially when you realize it's over a freaking Frappucino.
I realized, slowly, that I was this person. I was the "nothing has ever gone wrong in my life until I had to wait an extra 2 minutes for an oblivious geezer to go through the Express Checkout where she had no business being and I'm hood pissed about it" person. And when I thought about it, I realized it was my own fault for not being more on the ball and remembering that you can't make Cranberry Apple Crisp without apples. So, really, the only person I should be mad at is myself... not people who can't understand simple supermarket courtesy. Right? Right.
Right??
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