Shopping in Hell

I went shopping last week with my husband at a local warehouse club store. Let me tell you, if you go on a Wednesday afternoon around 4 p.m., you will find an interesting crowd. When we were looking for a parking spot, we were behind this lady who wanted to drive less than 5 MPH, as we guessed she was looking for the perfect parking spot. She passed by a good two dozen open spots, and many were even next to other open spots. Once we got to a vacant spot, my husband, who was driving, just pulled into one, and we were able to pass her crawling through the parking lot and just walked into the store.

When we got inside the front door, there was this guy who was about 25 years old, just cruising along in one of the handicap scooters. He was playing on his phone and cruising around the entire store. I’m sure he was perfectly able, he was being a tool. The employees seemed to forget entirely about customer service as several were screwing around in the aisles and one was collecting empty boxes, and his box cart took half the aisle and he made sure to break down boxes on the other side, so he blocked the entire aisle. As we were finishing up, one of the pickers (those people who pick items for curbside pickup and online orders) stopped his cart (which is about 6′ long) right at the end of the aisle blocking everyone from going down that aisle, as he walked two more aisles down to grab an item for a customer. I had to push his cart out of the way and squeeze by.

But the real fun came from all the men who were shopping and practicing what I call “Jesus take the wheel.” As they let go of their cart, they pushed it away and then went in the opposite direction to get an item from their list. I must have seen this about five or six times from different men. It was almost comical at the end of our visit.

As we head to the checkout, sure enough, there are only two cashiers, and they both have long lines, but the self-checkout is open, and I refuse to use it unless I have a couple of items, not a full cart. And if you use the self-checkout and have heavy items, a cashier has to come over and check out those items regardless, so why bother? So we resigned our fate and stood in one of the lines. When it became our turn, the cashier (who happened to be training) kept double ringing up our items. The good thing is that the person training him was paying attention and made him void them all. When we finally reached our car, we checked every item to ensure.

And what trip wouldn’t be complete with people trying to back into you as you exit the parking lot? It’s not such a fun time, NOT!