Sweet Gummi Mary! Two days out of the house this week, and Mrs. Hillbilly Mom is already Public Enemying herself! Good thing she's on Stay-At-Home-Down again now.
I didn't leave home with a plan to scoff at laws. Nope. I was wide-eyed and trembling with anticipation of a trip to civilization. I had to pick up prescriptions (drive-thru). Get a box to mail my BPhF Nexy (Best Phone Forever Nexus 7)'s corpse to Genius. No problem. Believe you me, nobody hangs around in the lobby of the Dead Mouse Smelling Post Office. I darted in Save A Lot for romaine lettuce, bananas, sardines, shredded cheddar, and butter. THEN I headed to Country Mart. That's where the Public-Enemying occurred.
Since my last visit, Country Mart has acquired green tape lines at 6-foot intervals at the checkouts. So if people are loitering in the checkout vicinity, they are most likely in a line. Not much room. The lines have to bend sideways into the main front across-the-store aisle.
Coming back from the far-end freezer case with Farmer H's special individual ice cream cups, ready to check out, I saw that the first checkout, the express, had a young dude working there. He had put up the CHECKOUT CLOSED sign. But an old man with a loaf of bread was waiting anyway.
I moved on to the only other open checkout. I could see a couple leaving. And a lady having her groceries scanned. Also, there was an abandoned cart in the main front across-the-store aisle. Huh. It was just a CART, with some food in it. Nobody around. The green tape lines run the other way. The cart wasn't pointed down the checkout lane. Then again, it was in a place where it could have been waiting for that lady to move up.
Mrs. HM was having none of it! Too bad, so sad! An abandoned cart is ABANDONED! A cart can't wait in line! I went on past it. Not at all remorseful when I caught a movement in my peripheral vision. An old lady halfway down the cookie/cracker aisle without a cart.
I don't even care if I jumped line on her! Carts can't hold a place in line! You need a human for that. Right? Right?
As far as I'm concerned, you had every right to jump ahead of that cart. As a checkout operator I got annoyed often enough by people who were at the head of the line and suddenly remembered they needed something for aisle 12 or wherever and would scoot off to get it even with half their stuff on the conveyor. I used to turn it off and serve the next customer in line, sometimes the next two or three, depending on how long the first missing customer was gone. There's NO way I'd hold up everyone else just for her.
ReplyDeleteRiver,
ReplyDeleteGood for you! I hope the other customers broke out in a verse of "For She's a Jolly Good Fellow" to show their appreciation!
"You're not there?
ReplyDeleteWho cares?"
"You're gone?
Don't bother with a sad song."
"You're AWOL?
You got some gall..."
"You abandoned your cart?
That ain't too smart."
Sioux,
ReplyDeleteYou're a poet and I didn't know it, Madam!