Dear Fellow Grocery Shopper

Dear Fellow Grocery Shopper, 

Did you ever notice, as you were winding your way through that consumer's forest of gluttony, how narrow those aisles are?  There is usually just enough room for one cart going one direction down an aisle and one cart going the other...or for one cart to pass a stopped cart.  So can you explain to me what would possess you to stop YOUR cart in the MIDDLE of the fucking aisle?

I know...there are so many decisions to make on every aisle.  Forty-seven varieties of barbeque sauce.  Two hundred thirty four varieties of breakfast cereal.  Sixteen varieties of tomato based products manufactured by three different brand names.  And that doesn't even address price comparison or size to price value.  But believe me, parking in the middle of the aisle does not, in fact,provide you with more room to consider your options.  The cart remains the same size.  The aisle remains the same size.  All you have succeeded in doing is putting the proverbial cork in the bottle.  You have succeeded in stopping traffic going both directions.  Oh, and you have pissed off everyone else in the aisle with you.

There are only two people in the grocery store that everyone hates more than you.  The first is the other middle-of-the-aisle-cart-parking-jackass that WALKED THE FUCK AWAY from his cart to run back to a previous aisle to grab something he forgot.  I can relate to the fading memory as we get older.  But is it really necessary to add five minutes to the shopping experience of the entire aisle's population?  If this happens every couple of aisles, suddenly my twenty minutes in the grocery store is stretched into an hour.  I love a good shopping experience, but not so much that I want to more than double my time spent in one.

The other is the dumbass with fifteen items trying to waltz through the 10-items-or-less checkstand.  Dude, let me explain.  Fifteen bags of Doritos for your football party is not ONE item...it's fifteen items.  Therefore it does not meet the criteria for 10-items-or-less. You would think that you could simply tell the cashier "I have 15 bags of this" and hand her one bag to scan then multiply by fifteen.  But in most cases these days, you can't.  Because Doritos come in a couple of different sized bags that look pretty similar to the lay person...are, in fact, very similar.  Family sized and party sized bags are different by 1 ounce.  We can't expect the cashier to know the product she is ringing up (which is an entirely different blog post, I can assure you).  So she has to handle and scan each item separately.  Sure, it doesn't take much longer for her to scan those extra five bags...but the lady standing behind you with a gallon of milk in one hand and a toddler with a runny nose in the other?  She wants to rip off your head and shit down your neck.

So people, please...pull your head out of your ass.  Have some situational awareness.  You are not alone in the grocery store.  Treat your cart as you would your car.  Drive on the right side of the road.  If you have to stop, pull over out of the way of traffic.  If you have to walk away, ensure that your car(t) is not causing a mile-long traffic jam.  Make sure you actually meet the criteria for that express lane.