Midday Shoppers

Yesterday I was grocery shopping midday, a luxury of working whatever schedule I choose, but somehow I'm not sure that beating after work errand runners is any more desirable than facing leisurely afternoon shoppers. The average age in any given grocery store at 11:00 am is approximately 65. The aisles are congested with stalled carts and motorized wheelchairs. No one is in a hurry except you.

The checkout lines are deceptively short, so I continually make the fatal error of passing up the self-check stations. At least ten minutes is tacked onto each customer as they organize their stack of coupons. I can't remember the last time I used a coupon. Even the items with "Save $1 Instantly!" coupons stuck to the front seem to slip my mind until I'm home unpacking them. Finally, after all discounts are accounted for, the elderly customer in front of me will make some bizarre request like putting $81.05 on her card and pay the remaining $0.90 in cash.

At this point in the transaction I'm desperately looking around for other open registers, but now I'm sandwiched in line. Just when I'm near making an attempt to scale the rack of tabloids, ready to face the sensitive self-check machines (no, I did not remove an item from the bagging area!), it's finally my turn. The cashier has straw hair, dyed black with gray roots grown in a full inch. She squints at me through over-sized spectacles and asks if I've heard anything about the Sasquatch discovery. A man an aisle over butts in, ranting about how the ordeal makes "us" look bad; now people will be skeptical at the true discovery of Sasquatch. I was instantly grateful I held out for this bit of human contact.