Part the First
We had to do a bit of grocery shopping this afternoon. We brought in our own reusable bags, because 1) I hate plastic bags and 2) Rob hates plastic bags and 3) The Earth! Al Gore can’t eat all that carbon by himself! 4) the plastic bags, once they get into our house, start to hump each other and multiply exponentially (I haven’t seen this but I have heard suspicious crinkling sounds emanating from beneath the kitchen sink on nights when the lights are low and the Barry White music’s playing).
When we were done shopping Rob went to the checkout, and I wandered off to look at the flowers or something. I have a horrible attention span. The flowers were pretty, though.
It wasn’t until I returned to the checkout that I realized that the bagger had completely ignored our reusable bags, and put everything of ours in plastic. Rob hadn’t noticed until I did (his attention span? Better than mine, but like I said, mine is *really* bad). I said something along the lines of “Rob, didn’t you give them our bags?” – he had – meanwhile the bagger had one of our bags in her hands and was looking at it as though it came from space (it didn’t. we bought it in that exact supermarket). “Do you want me to re-bag these?” she asked. I looked at the huge lineup behind us and thought of the anger it would provoke if we were to demand that she take our groceries out of the bags they were already in just to put them in the bags we’d brought. “No, it’s alright” I said, although I was pretty annoyed.
“Or!” she said, as if a lighbulb had just come on above her head “I could take the plastic bags of stuff and put them in your bags!” Yes, because that would solve EVERYTHING. It was at this point that Rob saw that my eyeballs were about to explode so he just politely declined her offer and shepherded me (and our plastic-bagged groceries) out of the store.
Part the Second
Next, I had to take myself off to our local WalMart. Please don’t judge me. It’s the only place I can buy no-name Zantac and I NEED MY NO NAME ZANTAC. So I picked up my no-name Zantac. And I went to their big bank of checkouts.
It’s Saturday. When do most people shop? On Saturday. Where do most people shop? Around here? Walmart. Yet there was only one checkout open.
I was about 449th in the one lineup for the one checkout. People were getting antsy. They just wanted to buy their toilet paper and their Orovo and their beef jerky! But they were being forced to wait in line for three hours! How was this fair? Children were crying and screaming and running all over the place (okay that’s not really new at The Wall Marks) (my grandma used to call it The Wall Marks). Old people were actually leaving the lineup to go sit down and rest. I had to pee really bad. It was anarchy!
There were three manager-type people standing around by the checkouts (I know they were managers because they were wearing red vests, and regular walmart workers wear blue vests). They were just kind of chatting. I’d been in line for about 10 minutes when a man in front of me turned to one of them and said “This is a long lineup! Can you do something about this?” One of the managers disengaged herself from her conversation, and said “Sir, you could go to the courtesy desk, if you only have one or two items” (his cart was in front of him. He had a cart full of items. What the heck?). He gave her sort of an incredulous look, then exaggeratedly looked at his cart, and then at the long (500 people by this time – I kid you not!) lineup snaking its way around the front of the store. “I don’t think sending me to the courtesy desk is going to help this,” he said, indicating the hordes of people all waiting in line for the one checkout. The poor overworked cashier looked about ready to drop.
(an aside – I worked in a Wall Mark Type Store – but not Wall Mark) through high school. Once there were four people in line, it was policy to open a new checkout until they were all open)
The manager looked around, looked back at her manager-friends, and then turned to the gentleman, only to ask the best question in the history of all mankind.
“Do you want me to open another checkout?”
(please ignore the kanji subtitles). I checked out 
