Tag Archives: Grocery Store

August 1, 2014

Oh, I Know What You’re Thinking About

By Thoughts and Rants in Jogging Pants

I went to the grocery store on a Friday. Not as bad as a Saturday or a Sunday, but not as good as a Monday through Thursday. I don’t mind the grocery store as long as it’s completely empty, or almost at least. I like food. It’s people I don’t necessarily like. That sounds harsh. People are OK I guess, but when they are pushing shopping carts I find them completely intolerable. Friday it seemed like everyone got paid, and left work early to stock up the refrigerator for whatever weekend madness they have planned. Perhaps that’s what people were also thinking about as they meandered through the aisles aimlessly with their shopping carts, and made perfectly sure that there were no available spaces for the functional humans who might actually have other things to accomplish this day to maneuver through.

Starting with my man who walks up to the cart line to grab his cart, and stops in front of it to read a text message. Don’t get your cart and pull it over somewhere first!!! Read that message now! Make haste! No, it’s OK, I’ll wait here. You must be confused with that alternate universe in which you are the only person in it. It’s ok, I’ll just pretend to look at the massive display of Oreo cookies which are promotionally priced. While I daydream about Oreos, you daydream about some ridiculous weekend decision like which checkered shirt to wear to Phil’s Barbecue, and whether or not Stacey is gonna bring any of her single friends this time. I know based on the fact that you don’t possess the intelligence to pull a shopping cart out of the stack and move it to the side, or alternately move yourself to the side, so other people can shop here too, that you will have a weekend highlighted by your own mediocrity, and if you do manage to get a girl’s phone number, it will be a fake, and you won’t have removed enough barbecue sauce from your ignorant little fingers to accurately punch it into your phone anyway.

Or the Fifty-something guy who is staring at the canned corn with his shopping cart JUST DIAGNONAL ENOUGH to prevent another cart from getting by. I wait patiently, listening to Air Supply on the speakers. How much analysis can you possibly do on canned corn? Let me run it down for you. The name brand one costs more, but they’re both exactly the same. Make sure you check for dents in the can. Are you waiting for the cans of corn to start dancing? That would be about the only reasonable excuse for standing there in full on space cadet mode with your cart blocking the aisle. Just tell me that the show’s about to start, because if these cans of corn start dancing, I will park my cart diagonally as well and watch the show with you, only after I pick up some Cheetos from aisle #3. Oh, they aren’t about to dance? THEN MOVE YOUR CART!! GET OUT OF THE WAY!!! STARE AT CORN WHEN YOU GET HOME!! Or are you trying to avoid going home? Is your wife gonna make you clean the windows and trim the hedges? Are you stalling? I understand, just move your cart to the side.

Or the obnoxious lady checking every single egg in the package. Both sides. While standing in the doorway of the fridge, so less OCD people could just grab some eggs, do a cursory glance at them and check the date. She’s checking them over like she’s at the antique road show trying to put in a bid on some hand crafted trinkets from the 18th century, not like they are something that she will crack in half in less than 2 weeks, and guess where her cart is while she’s doing this? Blocking the way! Was there ever a doubt. She’s obviously thinking about how her life is spinning out of control, and making sure that these eggs are absolutely perfect is the only way to bring some semblance of order to her existence. The irony here being that if she only went through life as the type of person who didn’t stand in the fridge doorway blocking people from getting eggs while her shopping cart blocked the aisle, that she would probably be in a better place where she didn’t have to make sure her eggs were perfectly crafted works of chicken magic.

I of course would also be able to get home quicker.

10 Comments   |  tags: , , , , , | posted in Humor, Rants, Stories, Uncategorized

September 24, 2013

Not Hot Beach Bodies?

By Thoughts and Rants in Jogging Pants

There’s nothing like going to the grocery store to inspire me to write a Monday rant. There’s so much wrong with the world, and most of it in some way is going on at the grocery store. Could it be that the grocery store is a microcosm of our society? Shit, I could explain what I think I mean by that, but I don’t have a good explanation at the moment, and this post isn’t about grocery stores anyways, so I’m bailing on that concept. You deep thinkers out there can decide for yourselves. It’s 10:46 pm as I’m typing this. I gotta keep it simple or else I’ll get sleepy and won’t finish.

What went on at the grocery store today that could inspire a rant you say? Same thing that goes on at the grocery store everyday, but I usually don’t take notice. Perhaps I do, but maybe don’t always find it as offensive as I did today. To say its offensive is not to say that I’m specifically offended. I don’t offend that easily. I’m offended on behalf of society.

Why am I offended on behalf of society you say? I’m offended in general by gossip magazines. They’re always at the check-out in grocery stores. I’ve never purchased one, but I (like any other weak-minded soul) will check out the cover. There is a lot of information about celebrity weight fluctuation, marriage troubles, and not much else as far as I can tell. I don’t support this industry. I’m not saying that I’m better than anyone else for it. I’m sure there are industries that I do support that are worse than this. That said, I will look at the cover. I’m in the lineup at the grocery store, what else am I going to look at, chocolate bars??? We all know how that ends.

Today I got offended by one particular gossip magazine that I saw at the grocery store. It’s called Star Magazine. If you run out right now and get one, you’ll see the cover features “Best & Worst Beach Bodies”. This is certainly enough to pique someone’s interest. I almost don’t even have a problem with ‘Best Beach Bodies’ other than it being an invasion of privacy. At least there’s some positivity associated with compiling their best pictures of famous people at the beach. Do we really need ‘Worst Beach Bodies’???? I’ll give an example. They have a picture of Bruce Jenner’s son, and beside it, bold letters that read ‘HOT’. Beside that there’s a picture of Bruce Jenner, and beside it, bold letters that read ‘NOT’. Sooooo Bruce Jenner doesn’t have a hot beach body?? Bruce Jenner is 63 years old! Why would he have a hot beach body? More importantly who cares?? Even more importantly, does this mean that if you’re famous, and you don’t have a ‘hot beach body’, that you have to stop going to the beach?? Apparently it does! No wonder these poor buggers are always getting plastic surgery. No matter how washed up they get, there’s always the potential of them ending up on the COVER of a magazine in their bathing suit??? I think I would have been fine with a picture of his son, and a collection of other good pictures of ‘hot beach bodies’, but is there a new thing where you get ridiculed for going to the beach without a ‘hot beach body’? I would suggest that MOST PEOPLE do not have what would classically be regarded as ‘hot beach bodies’, does that mean none of them should go to the beach? That doesn’t seem right to me.

I know society doesn’t have too much sympathy for the rich & famous, and perhaps that’s why these particular magazines seem to be as successful as they are. I’m not too familiar with Bruce Jenner outside of his athletic notoriety. My understanding is that he’s the Kardashian kids’ stepfather. I’ve never watched that show (another industry I won’t support), so I have no idea how goofy this guy might be, but I don’t think it’s right for him or anyone else featured in that magazine to be ridiculed for what they might look like in a bathing suit. I also think that it sucks that they can’t just go hang out without being photographed. We’re the ones that buy the magazines, so we have nobody to blame but ourselves. It’s a bit disturbing to me, that’s all.

4 Comments   |  tags: , , , , , , | posted in Humor, Rants, Uncategorized

January 14, 2013

Bag it up!!

By Thoughts and Rants in Jogging Pants

I know nobody wants to say this but I’m personally tired of the subtle attitude I get from lazy treehugging cashiers when I ask for plastic bags. Listen, nobody wants to save the planet more than I do. It’s not the planet’s fault that humans are stupid. The planet got a raw deal. Most of the other species that inhabit earth do a way better job at taking care of earth than we do. Which is appalling considering we’re supposed to be the smartest. What we’ve done to this planet is the equivalent of having sex every night on the same bed sheets for thousands of years and only washing them maybe every 4 or 5 hundred years. Disgusting when you think about it. Easier to not think about it. Here’s the thing though….. I feel guilty for that, but not to the point where I don’t want my friggin groceries to get bagged.

When I was a child, I fondly remember my father coming home from work with Paper Bags full of groceries. I’m no expert, but it seems that nowadays we could just recycle paper bags, couldn’t we? I don’t think we recycled back then. Probably just set everything on fire, I don’t remember. Then we got plastic, which is way more awesome for holding groceries, but bad for the environment. Suddenly, society grew a brain and decided that there should be a movement towards saving the planet. So now plastic has been replaced by an optional ‘bring your own bag’ system which makes perfect sense. I’m happy to do it. I’m doing it for the environment dammit!!! When I remember that is.

There is a fundamental flaw with this system which is the ‘optional’ part. Due to a combination of laziness and forgetfulness, and me personally being afflicted with both, I often don’t bring my own bags. I have them. I must have a dozen of them. Chances are they are just outside in the trunk of my car, but I’m not walking out there to get them once I’m already in line with my shopping cart. So then I get to the front of the line, and the cashier is asking me if I need bags. I tell her I do, and she asks how many. The thing is I don’t know! I have probably a hundred bucks worth of groceries to buy, so why don’t you just bag them up, and then you can tell me how many we used. I didn’t know I was required to keep count of how many bags my purchase would potentially take up so I could accurately assess that for you at the time of purchase.

Then there’s this new thing where I’m now kind of expected to bag these groceries myself. She either puts the bags I brought over to the side and rings everything through, and doesn’t start bagging until the end, or she grabs 6 or 7 plastic bags and sets them over there too. Now when she sets my bags to the side like that and bags at the end, it’s one thing, but when she grabs 6 or 7 plastic bags and sets them over there (not using the hooks that keep the bags open, so you can just drop the items in), the expectation is that you want me to bag my own stuff. So you want me to bring the bags, and now you want me to bag my purchases too? Why don’t I sweep the fucking aisles while I’m at it. I’m sure there’s a couple of skids of frozen goods I could consolidate as well. If I didn’t want service, I would have gone to the self-serve checkout, or I would have gone to some no-name brand carrying discount store. I know this isn’t a gourmet fine foods retailer, but it’s a half decent grocery store. When I go to a half decent grocery store, I want half decent service!

Let me bring it back to the environmental issue. I am sensitive to this, although my sensitivity wears thin when I’m made to feel guilty every time I use a plastic bag. I want all you blog readers to know that I do re-use these plastic bags. I keep them, and I use them to line the garbage cans in my bathrooms. So it’s not a one-dimensional life for these plastic bags. They get to do 2 jobs before destroying the environment. All you grocery store lineup hippies giving me the look because you remembered your environmentally friendly bags, and I forgot mine…….what do you line your garbage cans with??? Do I see Glad Kitchen Catchers going into your eco-friendly bag? Or the big green garbage bags?? Don’t be a hypocrite! You better be all plastic free, or cast your judgemental eyes aside!! I’m tired of this shit!!!

Or…… maybe none of this is really happening…. maybe it’s just perceived, and I’m just really really tired and need a vacation.

Just as an aside…. If you use self checkouts, then you support robots taking over the planet….. more on that in another blog some other time!

19 Comments   |  tags: , , , , , , | posted in Humor, Rants