Saturday At Costco

Saturday is not the day to go shopping at Costco if you don't like crowds...unless you can get in and out in a hurry when they first open.  OF(Old Friend of undesirable snackage fame) and I chose poorly.  We braved the Costco crowd to get stuff we could have lived without.  My necessities included dried mangoes, almonds, Asian pears, cat food, cat litter, and bread.  OF's list was half & half, t shirt, skort, beer, cat litter, strawberries, and some kind of healthy looking pre-made salad...she looked for her favorite humus dip but alas...they were out of it...for the second time in a row.   All of these things we could have waited to get and my frustration level wouldn't have reached a near all time high.  Every time I choose poorly like this I swear I'll never do it again...but I do...over and over and over...obviously I'm insane.

I can't get over the fact that so many of the shoppers are completely oblivious to the people around them.  Most of them don't even have the decency to apologize or even look sheepish when their loitering at the snackage stations forces everyone else to wait on them.  Have people always been this rude, obnoxious, and self centered or do I just notice it now because I'm old and impatient?  Am I'm just being self centered?  Being forced to wait for all the snackage seekers blocking the isles to move on to the next free snack is really not going to throw my life into complete chaos...even though at the time it feels like it.  Maybe its expecting too much to feel that people should be considerate of others.

Most of the time I don't sample the snackage items offered not because I don't want to try them, but because I'm afraid I'll get food stuck between my teeth.  Then I'll be walking along, fat, dumb, and happy, smiling at people only to find out when I finally look in a mirror that I've got wads of bread, chips, or whatever the sample  happened to be, packed so full between my front teeth that it looks like I was trying to caulk the spaces along my gum line with snackage bits...it's truly disgusting.  I know other people notice because food stuck between someones teeth is one of the first things I notice about people when they smile.  That and spitlette crusties in the corners of their mouth...I also notice when they accidentally blow spit bubbles and have spit strings between their upper and lower lips.  It makes me want to wipe my mouth continuously.

I watched one woman get trapped in a main isle in front of a snackage sampler who had the audacity to leave her cart halfway in the isle while she stood in line at the snackage station...she was there for a really long time...I think she took more than one sample...isn't there a rule against that?  The flow of traffic kept this poor woman from going around the loitering lady's cart.  I only noticed her because I was trapped behind the same woman's cart. I was immediately impressed with how patient she appeared...and I wondered if she, like me, was inwardly raging and wanting to do serious bodily harm to the woman blocking our path.

One woman even managed to block an isle without a cart...she just stood there talking to another shopper forcing everyone to make detours through other isles.  I actually waited in front of her for nearly a full minute hoping she'd step aside but noooooooo....she never moved her fat ass a single inch.  The guy she was talking to didn't say anything either...he could have pointed out that nobody could get around her.  His lack of action  made him a target of my anger as well...fortunately for them it's been drilled into me since birth that one must always be polite.  Someday I'm hoping I can overcome the dreaded "Good Manner Syndrome" for just one day and see what it feels like to tell people exactly what I'm thinking.  I'm sure I'd end up regretting it when the "Guilt Syndrome" kicked in...then I'd feel like shit for hurting people's feelings...but just once it would be nice to know how it feels to say whatever you think.

On the way out of the store, when we were in line to have the handy receipt checkers look at our carts to make sure we hadn't stolen anything, I accidentally bumped the woman in front of me with my cart.  This bundle of joy was probably in her late twenties, early thirties, about five foot six, wearing a baggy yellow t-shirt hanging down to her knees, and jeans...I'm guessing she weighed in at about 250 lbs.   She was a chunky monkey to be sure.  The baggy yellow t-shirt only enhanced her humongous waist length, and unfortunately, bra-less boobage (that would've done any pasture animal proud by the way) laying atop her protruding girthage.  When she turned to glare at me I couldn't help noticing the sloped forehead and low, heavy brow bone clearly indicative of her Neanderthal lineage.  I couldn't tell if her knuckles would drag the ground since she had her hands on the shopping cart handle...but I bet they did...in fact, I bet they were covered with callouses.  The stink eye she gave me, in spite of my profuse apology, kinda scared me.  Good thing I suffer from "Good Manner Syndrome"...she might have whupped me if I'd said something like "quit holding up the show fatso".

Maybe the "Good Manner Syndrome" that my parents drilled into me isn't such a bad thing after all.  Could be I've survived all these years simply because I've been taught to be polite instead of saying what I think and pissing people off...wouldn't that be the stoopidist thing...

P.S.  OF calls shopping carts "buggies".  I've never heard anyone  call a shopping cart a buggy, have you?  Just another "stoopid thing"...