grocery store grump

Why have 13,000 checkouts if you're only going to open three?!? It must all be a conspiracy to get you to use the self-checkouts so they can eventually get rid of all the human cashiers. You can either wait half an hour to get a human or do it yourself in five minutes. Well, I'm not gonna do it. I'm mentally composing this post while waiting in the slowest of the slow lines (that always happens to me). Then, they open another cashier. And the woman who said she was just passing through darts into the opening.

Can't they see I have a 20-pound sleeping baby in my sling and my shoulder is sore? Shouldn't it be like offering pregnant women a seat on the bus? I keep composing. Then they open another cashier and another one and I know I am too slow to beat everyone else to them. Then another cashier says to me, "we can take you here." Ahh, music to my ears. So I slowly unload my cart while Ezra sleeps on in the sling (I could use a hand here people) and pay for my purchases.

At my usual grocery store (older, with no self-checkouts) they offer to help me to my car when they see the baby but not here. Oh well. I eventually get the groceries and Ezra into the car all by myself, regretting the sling.

Driving home, I keep mentally composing this post, while wondering how I'm going to unload all the groceries, get the stuff in the fridge and freezer that needs the cold, nurse Ezra and eat my lunch when I get home. A traffic cop steps in front of a stoplight, indicating that I am to turn into the side street. I'm confused. But I'm not going there, I'm going straight. Oh well, maybe they're going to check Ezra's car seat; I saw that on the news this morning. That would be handy.

So I pull over and wait, idling (I hate idling but have discovered that it's occasionally necessary on a warm day with a baby in the car). The cop comes over.

"Do you know you were doing 66 in a 50 zone? In a school zone?"

Crap. "Oh."

I'm sure you're familiar with the rest.

tags: speeding, grocery store, grump