On the Horns of a Dilemma....

One thing about living in a small town is that everyone knows everyone else.

Even if you don't KNOW someone, you know him or her. You might see the same people in the grocery store, at the "Y," at the nail salon, at the library, even if you don't know their names.

There's a woman who works at our local grocery store who is very friendly, but she gets on my nerves. She apparently thinks we're better friends than we are, because she has always been free with her complaints. She's one of those negative people, always complaining, usually about where she works. (Uh.....get a different job?) I refuse to allow her to wheel my groceries to my car, because I don't want to hear her gripe and grumble all the way across the parking lot.

Saturday I think she reached a new low. She was bagging my groceries while a young girl rang them up. They started talking about someone who works at the same grocery store, criticizing her about buying her groceries with food stamps. Negative Nancy said, "She had $1000 on her food stamp card. And she left here with four buggies full of groceries. And we're paying for that. And she has a husband, or a boyfriend, or whatever she calls him."

I was so uncomfortable I couldn't say anything. I just looked in the other direction and pretended to search for my car keys. I don't know the girl she was talking about, and it's certainly none of MY business how she buys her groceries or how much she buys. I'm pretty sure it was none of this woman's business either.

One of our neighbors is also a cashier there, and she was behind me, apparently on her break, paying for something. The loudmouth complainer spoke to her, and it appeared to me that our neighbor was a little curt toward her. As if she doesn't have much use for her either. I would be interested to know if she has the same take on the woman that I do.

I was so annoyed I was tempted to call the manager and tell him or her what happened. If I report her, am I sticking MY nose where it doesn't belong? She's bound to know who told on her, and while I don't think I should be embarrassed about it, well.... it is still a very small town. I wouldn't want her to get fired or anything, but I don't like talking to her. She makes me feel so awkward. It's not like it's a teenager we're talking about here. She's an older lady, and surely somewhere along the way someone has told her it's not nice to talk about people, it's unprofessional to talk about co-workers (in such a public way - there, I just cleared myself), and it's a cardinal sin of business to make the customer feel uncomfortable.

Maybe I will just shop somewhere else.

Albert Einstein the Grocery Bagger.......

Dear Einstein the Grocery Bagger:

For several weeks, I have begged and pleaded with you (and your co-workers) not to pack my grocery bags so heavy that I can't lift them. I realize that the recyclable bags will hold a lot more than the plastic ones, but that doesn't mean that I have any more arm strength.

It is incomprehensible to me why you pack the bags so heavy and then hand me back two - or three - EMPTY bags.

Last week I asked you (perhaps it wasn't you, but it might have been) not to make the bags too heavy. "I have plenty of bags," I said, "so don't make them too heavy."

When I got home, there was at least one bag that almost gave me a hernia when I tried to lift it out of the back of the car.

Long before the expression "going postal" became a part of our vernacular, in our family we had the expression "to pitch a Carol." I have tried mightily NOT to have my mother's disposition, but if ever there were an occasion on which pitching a Carol was not only called for but almost required, it was this morning at the grocery store.

I brought recyclable bags. Lots of them. Enough for each of them to have a single item. Well, perhaps that's an exaggeration. But I had plenty of bags.

"Not too heavy, please," I implored as you got started. Both you and the cashier acknowledged the words and one of you said, "Okay."

Then you proceeded to pack just as many CANS into one bag as you could. The helpful cashier noticed that you STILL HAD SOME FREAKIN' ROOM IN ONE BAG, and she brought MORE CANS TO PUT IN THE TOP.

Meanwhile, two limp, empty, lonely, forlorn, EMPTY bags lay on the end of the bagging counter.

I have to tell you that Hubby is the most laid-back, easy-going soul (except when he's drinking, and he wasn't at 10:00 this morning) you would ever chance to meet. I looked at him in amazement while you continued to pack a grocery bag that Arnold Schwarz The Incredible Hulk (I could spell that) couldn't lift unassisted. He burst out laughing at your idiocy.

Hubby is not one to make a scene, either. When I reached around you for the empty bags, he said to you, "What part of 'not too heavy' don't you understand?" and I felt completed vindicated. If Hubby is willing to comment on it, it is definitely commentable. Not to be confused with commendable.

You looked a little perplexed when I took canned goods out of one of the full bags and commenced to THROW them into one of the empty bags. I'm sure you and the cashier shrugged your shoulders and wondered why some customers are so irritable.

You don't have to worry about me pitching a fit in your store again, though. I will go back to shopping at the store I was patronizing before your spiffy new store opened. You're not the only grocery store in town, you know. I think you give your chain a bad name. I don't want to embarrass anyone, but it starts with a "P" and ends with an "ublix."

Not too heavy indeed.

Moron.

Sincerely,

Bragger

Grocery Shopping.....

Grocery shopping is a chore that I'd really rather not do. But we've become accustomed to eating, so I have to do it every week. I'm lucky in that Hubby will go with me without complaint most of the time. I try to get the shopping done on Saturday, but the weather was so yucky here yesterday that I put it off until this morning.

I don't follow all the rules of grocery shopping like I should. I do not clip coupons, nor do I usually make a list. I sort of do a mental catalog of the meal ingredients I already have on hand, factor in how many nights I can get away with something like a frozen pizza or a grilled sandwich, and I pretty much know how many meals I have to buy for in the coming week.

This morning I determined that I already had the makings for meals centered around smoked sausage, cubed pork chops, salmon patties, and possibly a frozen pizza. That left me with very little I actually had to buy, because I absolutely refuse to cook on Friday or Saturday night. And some Sundays. With the occasional Tuesday thrown in.

Why, then, did my grocery bill wind up being $107? There are TWO of us. TWO.

I know that I violated one of the main rules of grocery shopping in that I went to the store around 10:30, having had no breakfast. [By the time I got home it was time for lunch, so theoretically I saved those calories.]

I bought several items of "junk" to take to school for our post-lunch chocolate orgy that we have every day. Those items were more essential than you might think.

Then there were the $14 steaks I bought to grill for dinner tonight. And I don't even like steak. I figured we missed our Saturday night dinner date this week, so I thought Hubby might like a steak. Damn it, they come in twos. I prefer chicken and pasta or grilled salmon when we eat out.

Cat food usually runs us about $12 a trip. That's for Big Brutus, the vocal one who knows just what those canvas bags mean and starts yelling for food as soon as I walk in from the grocery store. Little Brutus is content with dry food, and she will sit patiently next to an empty dish without uttering a sound. I don't know if it's because she is patient or because she is retarded.

The construction paper and stencils for school were sort of necessary too. Students ask for those things all the time to do their projects. The last time someone asked me for construction paper, all I had was a couple of different shades of blue and one of green that had a hole cut out of the middle. [Why couldn't the goober cut it from the edge instead of rendering the entire sheet useless?]

I bought the cinnamon streusel to make and take to school tomorrow morning. Then I came home and discovered I wouldn't be going to school tomorrow because mother-in-law is having her gall bladder out, but the mix will keep. We need an occasional mid-morning treat to get us through until the post-lunch chocolate orgy. [I may detect a pattern here about my inability to lose weight despite hours and hours on the elliptical.]

I bought chocolate chips to make the most dangerous cake recipe ever, something you mix up and put in a coffee mug and make in the microwave. But I neglected to buy the powdered cocoa that it also calls for, so I'm hoping I forget that package of chocolate chips is in the cabinet. [See above.]

I bought batteries for my clock at school, because it died on Thursday night and I will look at it 1162 times tomorrow and find that it is no later than 9:35. Shudder. Oh, I forgot, I'm not going to school tomorrow. Tuesday then.

I'm not experiencing buyer's remorse or anything. I have absolutely no problem with any of the things I bought. I just find it curious that I have some internal wiring system that calculates my grocery bill as I go, and it's not happy unless I go just slightly over the $100 mark.

Spending $100 on groceries for a week, even for just the two of us, isn't really that bad.

If only it were food.