We have two grocery stores in our little town, one is a locally owned franchise store called Grocery Outlet and the other is Mega Monster Corporate Giant Octopus Vons Grocery. Since the much higher priced Vons has fresher produce and always has better brands, I shop there when I’m after specific stuff.
Bear in mind that I’m getting crankier as my left eye very slowly but definitely gets a little darker over time and I don’t like it. It’s causing me to screw up, nothing major, but small mistakes add up.
Anyway, no problem getting in the door and getting the initial shopping done in the produce section, then on to the meat counter where I asked the woman I’d never seen in there before, for 2 pounds of bacon and 4 of the nice big sausages next to the chorizo sausage, which will burn your mouth out and make it permanently useless. She hands me my packages and off I trundle, to get a dozen eggs, a tub of margerine and two bottles of my favorite creamer. Then a few more items and over to the checkout. Now the fun begins.
I slide my card through the strip reader, NO. Push it into the chip reader. NO, strip reader, NO, finally the chip reader accepts it, BUT FIRST, would I like to donate to… No, I would not. Okay, I’m asked to give to something else, I push No, okay then, would I like to be involved in some other goddam thing, No, I push NO a third time and then it presents me with two options, “If you agree to allow us to send you email ads from God Knows how many sellers of whatever we sell your information to, Press Here”. NO. At that point I uttered JESUS CHRIST, which earned me a scowl from the fat, dumpy old twat at the register.
My hell sakes, what is wrong with those people that they do their best to make shopping in their stores as repugnant an experience as possible? No one goes to the grocery mart to be hounded for donations to anything, and it happens I researched what they do with the money and only 3% goes to any charity, the rest is “operating expenses”.
On arriving home, I found that I’d bought the coffee creamer brand that I hate because they’ve changed their colors and appearance to mimic the best selling one, which is of course the one I buy, because it’s the best. I wouldn’t have made this mistake if it weren’t for that Damned Eye, and Poe be damned as well.
Ah, but we’re not quite done. I told that butcher lady I wanted four of those sausages. Somehow she heard Three, which is what I actually came home with but at least that’s all I was charged for. There is that.