My trip to Trader Joe's: part 2
Originally uploaded by Malingering.
I went for my monthly trip to Trader Joe’s today. There is a reason I only go grocery shopping once a month, namely the fucking idiots who live in my neighborhood. I would rather eat frozen food for three weeks straight than have to set foot in that place more than once every 30 days. The whole ordeal starts upon entrance to the parking lot, where 33% of the spaces are clearly marked COMPACT and 75% of the vehicles are obviously gas guzzling tanks straddling the lines delineating each spot in a “I can do whatever I want because my car cost $50,000” manner. Then I am forced to circle the parking lot at least 3 times which inevitably results in some 35 year old makeup caked woman on her cell phone nearly backing up into my car. One time I honked my horn repeatedly and the woman kept backing up. I had cars in front of me and behind me, thus trapping my poor little Bleu into the fate of an SUV in reverse. I rolled down the window and screamed at the woman to stop, to which she stopped the car, got out, and said “look, my neck hurts, I can’t turn my head, okay?” Oooooooooh, okay. I’m so sorry that your Thai massage therapist is out on a yoga retreat this weekend and you’ve been forced to suffer the pain of muscular tension. I should have known you were incapable of head movement so why don’t you go ahead and plow carelessly into my car. You’ve earned it.
I finally pull into a spot (marked compact, but my car is just that) which marks the beginning of my odyssey through the parking lot. This resembles the old American Gladiators game where the gladiators shoot tennis balls at you and you run around like a jack rabbit trying to dodge the sting of the projectiles. But in this case you are dodging much more massive objects (force = mass x acceleration) like SUVs and $8,000 baby strollers and 8 year old whining girls in pink furry uggs all of which are far scarier than a tennis ball traveling at 700 miles/hr and certainly can do more harm.
Entering the store heightens my anxiety for two important (and rather telling( reasons. First, it is always crowded with self-absorbed entitled assholes who do not move out of your way. Second, those self-absorbed entitled assholes are cloaked in the most ridiculous outfits of all time (especially when you consider we are grocery shopping here): furry ugg boots with cut-off jean shorts, enormous camo cargo pants with a 14 inch wide belt, and whiny little 8 year olds in sequined asswriting and tiaras that spell out “princess” over their perfectly coifed little heads; the worst part being that my hands are too full and my position too conspicuous to capture these people onto my memory card. The best I can do is the occasional camera phone shot which hardly does anyone justice (see above).
Wandering into the aisles is another hopeless adventure. There’s the 80 year old woman who is blocking the entire dairy aisle because she’s asking an employee to find her specific brand of yogurt which she can’t see on the shelf because she forgot her glasses since that immigrant cleaning lady moved them last week. Then there’s the 9 year old pigtailed girl who is crying tears of frustration and anger because grandma wouldn’t buy her some lemon mints. She even called her mother on her cell phone and shrieked “grandma won’t buy me mints and they’re sugar freeeeeeeeeeeee!” Next was the idiot who parked her cart in front of the cheese aisle successfully blocking everything from asiago to manchego and in her cloud of cluelessness she picks up her block of brie, puts it in MY cart and walks off (I watched for about 3 minutes as she put tortilla chips, salsa and salami into my cart before I pointed out that it is her cart that is preventing everyone from getting their minimum required intake of calcium, and my cart is the one she is pushing to which she giggled incessantly “oh I’m so sorry hee hee” which was ridiculous because my cart had about 30 items in it and hers had about 6). The most painful for me was the girl who had her phone and sunglasses tucked into her cleavage and there was no way for me to lift my camera phone high enough to get a good shot of it so I just stood there in the checkout line contemplating why anyone would think it was a good idea to use that area as a storage unit. I don’t hold my wallet in my asscheeks, do I?
Needless to say I am so thrilled to get out of there that I not only bag my own groceries but the groceries of everyone in the checkout line in front of me just to speed up the process. I literally run back to the car, throw the food in, and get out of there before disaster can strike. It’s a wonder I can handle this even once a month. I might go on a SuperSize Me diet so my food purchasing encounters will be limited to drive-thru windows only where I can contain my frustrations to the confines of my car.
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