I shoulda known better.
I mean, yes, the Little Miss was showing signs of crankiness, which meant that the sooner we got the grocery shopping over with, the sooner we could get home for a nap, and the less chance there was of her passing out in the carseat before I actually got to the store, and since we were at the car dealership watching what Hazel now calls 'hockey dancing' when Hazel's mom suggested we go to the Superstore just around the corner so I took her advice and it was well-intended advice, given that she's well versed in dealing with cranky Hazel falling asleep while running errands, so let me put that right out there and say: I don't blame her for suggesting it, but still. I shoulda known better.
I've always hated shopping at Superstore. There's always been this vague feeling of unease that comes over me when I enter the store, like I've just accidentally bartered a piece of my soul away in exchange for a wonky shopping cart, and I've always joked that Superstore was where suburban families went to die, but, yesterday, well, yesterday was truly something remarkable.
It started with the realization that I had no loonie to put into the shopping cart - no biggie, I thought; I'll just pop by customer service and get some change, no problem. And look at that, there's only one person in line, and they seem to be disputing the price on a 2 litre bottle of Pepsi, this shouldn't take long...at...all...
Fifteen fucking minutes later. Standing behind a man who can't seem to understand why he has to pay a deposit on a recyclable bottle, even after the employee's explained that he'll get it back if he returns the bottle to a depot when he's finished with it, even after the employee's fetched her manager to come and repeat the same thing to him, and by this time I've resorted to asking people as they pass by if they'd be able to break a five for me, because even though there've been about five or six employees who've stopped to watch this pop battle, none of them are 'authorized' to open the goddamned till and help me out.
Cut to: another fifteen minutes later, stuck in the electronics department, waiting in line to pay for a movie that I told Hazel I'd pick up for her, the person ahead of me picking up what looks to be around twenty-five different packages of photographs, and trying not to get aggravated when he decides that he needs to check on EVERY PRINT in EVERY PACKAGE, because, well, it's a lot, right? Who wants to get home to find out that the developer switched your family vacation pics with someone's homemade porn-I-mean-art? So, just chill, Janzen, this won't take as long as you think, and it looks like someone's opening another till over there, oh, wait, no, he's just...doing nothing. Standing there. With an open till, and a scanner in his hand, he's just standing there, looking bored, sighing every now and then because he's got such a shitty job that makes him stand and do nothing. Well, let's go give him something to do.
"Sorry, actually, my till's not working, the computer's down."
Oh. Okay. Back in line. Thanks anyway.
Five minutes later: "Oh, did you want to pay for those?"
Um, yes?
"You don't need to wait here; if you're doing more shopping, you can just pay for them with everything else."
Gee, it's not that I'm not grateful, I mean, you're letting me get out of this line and continue on with my trip through what seems to be one of the deeper rings of Hell, I mean, you ARE doing me a favour, but maybe you could've told me this when I asked to buy these EARLIER?
Whatever. Not worth exploding over. Just get your shit and get outta here. Go get milk. Milk is good, right? You need it for stuff. Go get it. Where is it? There you go, oh, wait, hold the door open for that lady so that she can grab a carton, be nice, y'know, and - sure, why not, sir, go ahead and pick something out, I'll just hold the door for you here, and then I'll - oh, sorry, was I in your way? No, go ahead, lemme just hold the fridge door open for you, and for you, too, and then for you, and then -
Really? Am I really getting forced out of the dairy section by the amount of people cutting in to grab a carton of milk? Is this actually physically possible? Okay, fine, just go grab something else, calm down, you're fine, Hazel's fine, even if she's singing "ASTROBOYASTROBOYASTROBOYASTROBOY" at the top of her lungs, it's kinda fun, except for the fact that no one's moving.
Which is strange in itself, given that every time you move in to pick something up off the shelf, twenty people seem to dart in from nowhere to block your way and grab the very thing you meant to pick up, not unlike the way schools of starved piranha act when a wayward cow somehow gets dropped into the Amazon; and while this is going on, you look around and notice that everyone else in Superstore is basically grazing: they're moving at a snail's pace, making their way from food item to food item, making their dietary selection with as much affirmation as it takes to chew cud, usually pushing a shopping cart filled with 4.5 kids, eyes glazed over out of boredom as their lethargic frames are draped over the sides of the cart, and I get it, y'know, shopping with ONE kid is tiring, I can't even imagine how much shopping with THREE kids would kill me, but really, I look around me at places like this, and EVERYONE is moving this way, they're either shuffling along aimlessly or else they're scrapping with each other over who gets to park their cart next to the yogurt, and all I see are people waiting to die. I see absence of hope. I see people for whom this moment is no different than the next, that all they're doing is marking time until their inevitable demise.
Which, y'know, isn't a nice feeling. But before I get the chance to muster any sort of sympathy or sentiment, or maybe wonder about how the so-called convenience of bulk food box stores might be having some sort of detrimental effect on our collective spirit, how we might be forced to select our food based not on its nutritional merit but by which logo is more eye-popping, how maybe the decision to seek out actual markets run by people who've either grown the food themselves or at least know where it's come from might be worth the slight increase in price (if any), someone steals my cart WITH MY DAUGHTER STILL SEATED IN IT.
Seriously: I was right next to the cart, trying to pick out a loaf of bread, when I notice the cart moving away from me, and WHAT THE FUCK DO YOU THINK YOU'RE DOING?!
Okay, so it turns out that the lady was suffering from dementia, and had been doing this all day to people, and the staff who came to my aid tried to make all the right apologies and I tried my best to keep from blowing up and recognize that it was Saturday and it was bound to be a busy if not stressful shopping day, but really all I could think about was getting. The fuck. Out.
Oh, and: I would feel no remorse if someone bombed this fucking store out of existence.
So, we left; in record time, I think, which probably wasn't all that hard to do, given that after about forty minutes of 'shopping', all I had to show for my efforts were a carton of milk, a loaf of bread, two DVDs and a pack of batteries.
No comments:
Post a Comment