Supermarket Offenders

©iStockphoto.com/Sean Locke

You know how you used to love food shopping? Come on, you know you did. Strolling in a leisurely fashion through the aisles, enjoying the brightly colored produce, the freshly baked artisan bread, the seemingly endless choice of condiments and frozen foods, etc. Then something started to go wrong, and I’m not talking about the day they stopped doubling coupons over a dollar (what a crock of crap!). Suddenly you found yourself trying to justify putting half and half in your cereal and digging through your cabinets looking for something – anything – edible because the idea of going food shopping had suddenly become repugnant. Friends, I know what happened. The actions of the Supermarket Offenders soured your shopping experience.

There are several different kinds of SMOs. Like the “cast” of “Fox and Friends,” they work together to drive you slowly up the proverbial wall, while smiling as if they have no idea that they’re annoying the ever-loving crap out of you.

Let’s begin at the end because I feel like it, with the hasty line hoppers: people at the supermarket who don’t understand that when a new register opens, the next person in line gets dibs, and not the LAST person in line. I can’t really properly put into words how vexing this is to me, even when I am not the wretched shopper who has been made a victim of the dreaded HLH. I would like to spearhead an educational movement with the view to put an end to this. I even have my catch phrase: “Hasty Line Hopping Ruins My Shopping.” Catchy, huh? I see it being printed on posters with a distraught looking woman standing with spoiling cold-cuts in her cart.

Then there is the stealthy friend of the hasty line hopper: the clever express lane smuggler. You know the person – maybe you’ve even been her (if you have, for SHAME)! This is the person who gets on the “20 Items or Less” line with TWENTY ONE ITEMS. Or even more than that. This brings me to a general question: if one has a bunch of bananas and wants to get on the Express line, does one have to count each banana as an item, or the bunch as 1? I really can’t believe there is no Express Lane tutorial.

Of course, I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention the aisle hogging conversationalists. You know them. The two shoppers who have decided to have a coffe klatch in the middle of the condiments and snacks aisle, and have strategically placed their carts in such a way that nobody can get by. Please, go on. I realize that there is nowhere else in the world where you can possibly talk to this person about how you read on the interweb that talking on a cell phone while wearing a blue checked shirt can make you spontaneously combust, so it’s ok if I can’t get to my beloved Jalapeno Popper Doritos. It’s not like I look forward to them all week or anything.*

Then there is the perishable foods ruiner. This is the person who decided in the paper goods aisle that she doesn’t need that tub of ricotta, so she puts it down on top of some toilet paper. Her wily cousin is the notorious coffee cup discarder, who leaves her empty paper coffee cup haphazardly on some shelf because, well, she’s done with her coffee! More than likely, she was one of the aforementioned cell-phone-and-checked-shirt-explosion-theory-discussing coffee klatchers at whom you rolled your eyes and sucked in your stomach to walk by back in aisle 3. (And that coffee cup always, without fail, has either bright pink or red lipstick on it. Just an observation.)

There is also the too-good-to-be-true-line. This isn’t a person or the fault of a person, but a phenomenon. I believe it is called Acme’s Law in scientific circles: if you are in a crowded supermarket and all the lines suck, the line you find with the least number of people on it will be closing as soon as you get on it. The humiliation of hearing “Ma’am, I’m closing after this customer” is simply not to be born. I’ve been so traumatized by this that I typically get on the worst line in any line-related situation, figuring that there is no possible way I’d be lucky enough to get on a short line that isn’t subject to this rule.

All this being said, I want to add that I know I can buy groceries online. I’ve considered that, but then I remember what my mother told me when I was young and would complain about various hardships: it builds character. And of course, the less irritated I am, the less fodder for things like this. And if the world needs anything right now, it’s another stay-at-home mother complaining about the angst of food shopping.

*I am sad to report that I partook of this exact thing last week. I apologize to anyone I may have hurt or disappointed with this revelation.

Duchess is the SAHM of the two best children in the known universe, and her interests include starting diets with unbridled enthusiasm, watching “Law and Order” and trashy reality shows about cooking and modelling, and procrastinating. (She does not watch “Top Chef,” because it’s too classy. She has tried.) In her spare time, she enjoys contemplating what she should do with her spare time, if she had any.

Tagged as: annoying people, grocery shopping, hasty line hoppers, snark, supermarket offenders, supermarkets