A grocery store is a place of business where humans exchange currency for food and other items. During earlier times they were quite small in size, and community-based. But today they’re often so sprawling a person can see the curvature of the Earth way off in the direction of the little old ladies hunched over thin, nearly-expired pork chops in the rear of the store. And the managers operate under a strict set of emasculating rules transmitted from an office building in Ohio or Florida, or someplace equally horrible.
The local managers are generally alcoholic male humans, with considerable mustaches. They are often friendly, especially with customers, but employ a team of nearly-as-mustached assistant managers who make the lives of their subordinates a living hell: hardened asshole pirates with names like Skeeter and Chuck, who would cut your fucking throat if they thought they could get away with it. Admittedly, this reporter may be relying a little too heavily on specific personal experience in this section of the report.
Modern grocery stores are carefully calculated affairs, created via market research and focus groups. They are finely tuned to encourage customers to part with as much money as possible and return again and again. They often feature recent forklift drivers dressed in chef costumes cooking in the middle of the store, and a bakery that continuously pumps appealing smells into the air. Despite these efforts, however, aggravations remain, due to the presence and involvement of human beings.
Several years ago, for instance, most grocery stores began making motorized carts available to people with disabilities, which is admirable. However, the original purpose was almost instantly hijacked by members of “The Abundance.” Draped in a full bolt of fabric and usually chewing, these overfed humans now monopolize the contraptions. They ride up and down the valley of salty snacks, and through the soda pop canyon, as the motors whine and labor under their enormous loads. Sometimes the drivers of these “swaddle wagons” will honk their horns at people with crutches clipped to their forearms, because they’re not dragging their legs fast enough past the Little Debbie endcaps.
See also “lard carts,” “fat trucks,” “jiggle jazzies.”
Additional aggravations include, but are not limited to, obnoxious husband and wife shopping teams, screaming shithead children, pleased-with-themselves moms in ski vests holding cups of coffee as fashion, people conducting animated conversations on their cell phones, oblivious entrance/exit/aisle blockers, people who stand in line for an extended period but are flummoxed and confused when it’s time to pay, overzealous zit-blasted self-checkout monitors, and enormous surging banks of intestinal gas so pungent they can bring a healthy man to his knees. For reasons not clearly understood, grocery stores withstand a sustained rectal pounding reminiscent of The London Blitz during World War II.
I hope this report has proven to be helpful. As always, I will be standing in the open field behind Dollar General Store every Thursday between midnight and 2 a.m., if you should have any follow-up questions.
This concludes today’s broadcast.
I like to call them “Girth Haulers”
i about spit my water out through my nose when i read about the people riding the carts “covered in a bolt of fabric” !! never truer words spoken. funny stuff
Good stuff, Jeff! And congrats on the new venture; long may it wave.
To the point at hand, that photo looks like a Wegman’s. My local Wegman’s suffers from another aggravation: any attempt at purchasing alcohol results in the 12-year-old cashier asking to see your eye-dee. Proof of age and all that, even if it’s clear at a glance that you remember President Roosevelt. It’s obviously store policy, and most likely because Something Happened.
Don’t forget the slow moving “wall of family” who trudge shoulder to shoulder, blocking every lane, and leave their carts smack in the middle of the aisle whilst they block the rest of the lane conteplating which box of mac n cheese is best.