If there's a hell, surely it must be modeled after the experience of the modern-day grocery store checkout line.
Look at this lady here. Look how happy she is to be rung up for her groceries. There's no way in
hell that anyone who has ever visited my local Safeway has ever smiled anywhere
near this pleasantly while in line waiting to pay for her groceries. The Safeway in my town is the perfect storm of inefficiency and frustration, owing to the fact that our town is a town of, primarily, old people, and secondarily, college students. So, I, the 30-something career person with, you know,
shit to accomplish when I get home from the grocery store, am inevitably sandwiched at the checkout line between an old person with jack-shit to do when she gets home and a college student who, because it's the middle of summer, also has jack-shit to do when he gets home.
So my time at the checkout line on a typical Sunday afternoon looks like this: There is a gray-haired woman in front of me, purchasing three cans of clam chowder (it's August, but, hey, whatever, a bowl [or six] of creamy, potato-y, clammy soup heated to 190 degrees sounds pretty good, right?), three bananas, frozen lemonade concentrate, two gallons of Butter Brickle ice cream, a half-gallon of grapefruit juice, and three trays of Nutter Butter cookies. Eh, not a very balanced weekly shopping list, but who am I to judge? Perhaps when I'm old and my husband and cats have already passed away and I'm knocking on death's door myself, perhaps I will eat nothing but clam chowder and Butter Brickle ice cream and think "Kiss my ass, world!" as I'm purchasing and consuming said items (in fact, I think I can pretty much
guarantee that this will be my exact grocery list in that circumstance).
Anyway. Gray-haired lady. Fattening and/or sugary groceries. That's what's in front of me. Now behind me is a dude with (what else) a case of beer, guac fixins, chips with which to shovel the guac in, and three packages of hot dogs. He can hardly be said to be wearing a shirt, so thrashed is his sleeveless muscle-tee. Although, if I were in his position (being a 23-year-old college student with nothing to do but wake up late, work out, and watch pre-season football while drinking beer and nomming delicious guac with no consequences in the spare tire department), perhaps I'd be rocking a ripped half-shirt, too. So I can no more judge Douchey McCollege for his choice of attire than I can judge Granny up there for her determination to subsist on the flaky perfection of Nutter Butters for the rest of her days.
But. What I
can judge them for is their checkout line behavior. And I
do...boy,
do I!
Granny's not sure how to navigate the whole Club Card thing. She has a Club Card, yes, but she's absolutely stymied by the cashier's prompting to either present her actual Club Card, type her phone number into the keypad in front of her, or dictate her phone number aloud to the cashier so the cashier may type the phone number in
for her. After some moments of befuddlement that involve squinting at the cashier, squinting down at her purse, and then squinting at
me (which prompts me to become extremely interested in the sale price on Stride gum and the cover story of OK Magazine), she chooses Door Number Three and croaks out her phone number for the cashier to type into the register.
Meanwhile, Bud Light Boy behind me is waxing poetic to whoever is on the receiving end of his cell phone call: "Dude, no, dude, no, that's not what happened
at all! Naw, man, she was going out for a smoke, dude, and her fucking purse, man, her fucking
purse slipped off her shoulder and
that made her tit slip out! I swear to God, dude, I did
not pull her shirt down, dude." I breathe deeply and clack down one of those plastic lane dividers between our respective purchases on the conveyor belt to remind him that someone is within earshot of this display of his gallantry.
Back to Granny. It took the cashier less than fifteen seconds to ring up all her purchases once the Club Card issue was resolved, and now it was time for some form of payment for these groceries.
And this, this what happens next,
this is why the grocery store checkout line is hell on earth: A. Personal. Check.
It's 2010. No one--not even Granny, who no doubt gets her Social Security checks directly deposited into her bank account--should
ever write a personal check at the grocery store. That little computer-looking thing in front of you, dear? That's a magical portal wherein you can take advantage of your Safeway Club Card discounts
and pay for your cheaper groceries in one fell swoop! It's so easy! Your bank gives you a debit card for free (no more paying for checks!), and you don't even have to memorize a PIN! Just swipe it as credit! Click "yes" to approve the amount! I swear, it is
way easier than writing a check!
She wonders aloud about today's date. She asks the cashier for the total amount again. She squints at the screen that tabulated her purchases. She scrawls out "Safeway Food and Drug" in cursive that she learned back in 1942. She scrawls out the numerical amount. She writes out the words "Thirty-four dollars and 86/100 ----------------------". She signs it. She puts away her pen. She anchors the checkbook and slowly begins the process of ripping the perforated check out of her checkbook. But wait! First, before she hands it over, she must record the check number, the date, the amount, and, again, "Safeway Food and Drug" in the checkbook register! The ripping of the check resumes. The cashier, who has been very obviously daydreaming while this three-and-a-half-minute process occurs, takes the check, runs it through her register scanner, which eventually says "See Driver's License." Dear Flying Spaghetti Monster in heaven above, WHY ME?!
At this point, I pick up the periodical that tells me how in the world Kim Kardashian keeps her ass is so fucking huge but manages to pull off a flat stomach and twiggy arms (short answer: she ain't a white girl). I go to a totally different place while the digging through the purse and the shuffling of cards and IDs occurs in line in front of me. Apparently Bud Light Boy also has the wisdom to mentally escape from this hell, too, and attempts to engage me in the subject matter of my temporary reading material. "Heh, big ass," he declares. I chuckle with him and smile at this shared moment, thankful that I'm so much closer to his end of the spectrum of annoying than I am to Granny's end of the spectrum of annoying.
Somewhere between the article on Kim Kardashian and the six pages of Sketchers ads in a row, Granny and the cashier successfully complete the purchase. The scanner is bleeping and blooping once again, this time with my sensible hummus, plums, and whole grain spaghetti floating rapidly into my reusable bags. My moment of hell is over. And Kim Kardashian and her big ass secrets are coming home with my healthful groceries to remind me that life could be better, but it could also be much, much worse.
