Under the circumstances, any flight that you survive should be considered an upgrade…
#watchforsofteningwax
I’m so stressed out right now, I can hardly stand it. The stress of this election is making me sick to my stomach. I’m a first-time poll worker this year so I’m stressing about that. My husband’s health problems are stressing me out. Now my father’s back in the hospital and I flinch every time I get a phone call or text message notification, fearing it’s my stepmother saying he’s taken a turn for the worse. I don’t know how much more of this I can take. 
Oh and yesterday was my birthday, and I heard nothing from my mother. No phone call, no card, no Facebook like, nothing. She’s never done that before. Not sure what’s going on with her. I know she’s not lying on the kitchen floor alone unable to move or anything like that, she lives with my brother and sister in law (who both at least wished me happy birthday on Facebook.) My stepmother texted me, in between group texts about my dad, and my dad called, but nothing from mom.
So there’s shopping to do, and thank god the local supermarket thoughtfully requires their cashiers to ask, “Did you find everything all right today?”
Why, no. Thanks for asking. It seems I did forget the jar of organic / free range / no GMO peanut butter with no peanuts.
So what I’m going to do is this… I’m going to leave my shopping cart here, half unloaded onto the belt. Then you and the five or six people waiting in line behind me can stand here while I walk unhurriedly to the opposite end of the store, find the item and then return. I’ll probably have to go the long way around because there’s not much room in the chutes leading to the register.
I figure this should result in only 5-10 minutes or so of people standing around because I’m a douche who took you up on the stupid suggestion of actually leaving the line because I forgot something at the last minute.
But if that’s not enough, maybe I’ll pay by check or insist on cash-back from a debit card. If we’re lucky, it will require getting a manager to come over and that can waste some more time. Because you know, the system at supermarkets is already so efficient and makes so much logistical sense.
Fucking hell, i just had to block the mother of one of my close friends on FB.
It started when she posted a meme about how a consistent pattern of property destruction/screaming/throwing things to express anger toward someone is a form of abuse. (duh.)
Her son said something like, ‘this is pop psych bullshit,’ so I detailed what I went through as a child and how fucked up it made me and said that nobody who behaved in this manner would be welcome in my home. And he was like, ‘well I agree that’s abuse, but this meme makes it sound like slamming a door in anger is a precursor to domestic violence.’ (which it doesn’t, but fine.) I didn’t understand why he was being so defensive until Mom totally lost her shit.
[QUOTE=Friend’s Mom]
Spice, what you are saying is that there is no gray area. I wasn’t an abuser and am not. I didn’t do these things “at” anyone, but by your interpretation no one is allowed to be angry. I direct my anger sometimes at things so that I am allowed to vent safely. I know the types of things that you are talking about, I lived through them. But while doing them my mother stared at me in rage, making me know without saying that all of it was directed at me or my father. I don’t believe that venting anger is a bad thing, often I am angry at myself, and that used to be shown as hitting my head, my face, my body with closed fists, open palms, running into things, later by cutting. No, I believe that I have come much farther than that, and that venting is healthy. I haven’t done that in a while, and I didn’t intimidate anyone. And your statements are making me regress inside myself in shame, humiliation, and disgust. My mouth tastes sour, and I am chilled in horror, my stomach is upset, and my anxiety is through the roof. I am sorry I posted this.
[/QUOTE]
[QUOTE=Friend’s Mom]
I am my mother. I am an abuser.
[/QUOTE]
So I started to respond back but accidentally just quoted part of her words before I posted. So while I was editing the response she wrote:
Basically what I said is, ‘No, I’m definitely not making you feel this way, your thoughts and your trauma are making you feel this way, of course there are grey areas and I admit my line tends to be way out there given my experiences…’’
But she just continued losing her shit. The litany continued including calling me ‘passive aggressive’, proclaiming me ‘judge jury, and executioner’ and telling me that I made her feel like complete shit because I’m such an awful judgmental human being. Basically just paragraphs and paragraphs about how I had destroyed her progress on her trauma, and made her feel like shit and it was all my fault that she was now in a bad place in terms of mental health.
Fuck this woman so much. Obviously with how I was raised I can’t tolerate that shit, so I blocked her.
At the supermarket I use, what they do is send the bagger to get the forgotten item while the shopper and cashier carry on, so little lost time for others.
(Not that I ever forget anything. heh.)
What is this “bagger” of which you speak? The supermarket that prompted my rant can’t even be arsed to open enough registers, let alone have people standing around just to help the asshole customers who won’t bag for themselves.
Really - I see customers stand there and just watch the cashier do it, and they don’t even help. It’s unbelievable.
Sorry that happened, Spice. In future, here’s a FB editing tip that I learned the hard way: If I have something to edit (particularly when it’s a thread that got me emotional and I fat-fingered the “Submit” key), it’s better to copy what I have in the post, then delete the whole thing and start over.
Reminds me of the one customer I watched open a container of croissants while in line, and continued to talk on the phone and stuff her craw while the cashier bagged the few other items and everything took a couple minutes longer than it had to. My market has baggers, but I’m usually there after 11pm when there aren’t as many staff and either the cashiers or customers do the bagging.
Where I shop, the cashiers do the bagging, but if you forget an item, the cashier will get on the horn and call a stocker (there are usually a few of those working) to run and get the item for you.
Also, what’s unbelievable about customers not helping to bag? I rarely see other customers do this. The cashier has a carousel close by her hand where she can put items in a bag while she scans them. She doesn’t even have to move from behind the register. The customers pull the full bags off the carousel and put them in the cart.
My favorite store gets testy if you try to bag your own.
No carousel at my store. Still stuck in the 50s, apparently.
But I help bag at all times, even at a place set up as you describe. If it helps move the line even a few seconds faster, I pitch in. And I consider it a dick move if you don’t. There are already too many things conspiring to slow things up at these stores - and the slowest people always seem to be right in front of me.
I saw the best bagging equipment in use in Switzerland and Germany- no baggers, but two chanels for scanned items. The cashier would ring one customer through, and then switch over to the second area. The first person could continue to bag without getting in the way.
Or you could do what our Aldi checker did this morning and just use your arm to sweep everything into the trolley. Eggs be fucked.
And if you try to do that at my store, you practically have to stand next to the cashier behind the register, and most of them consider that a dick move. There’s no need for you to stand in the way and interrupt the cashier’s work flow. ISTM that that slows things down more.
When I say ‘help’, I mean actually helping, not interfering. As a functioning adult, I’m quite capable of identifying items away from the cashier’s hands and placing them in a bag on the opposite side of the carousel in such a way that it contributes to efficiency. I’m often thanked for doing this, I’m guessing because of all the aforementioned lazy pricks who just stand there and do nothing.
Yesterday, although there was no carousel, the cashier made a point of saying, “Thank you for bagging.” If it even occurs to a cashier to say that, I take it as evidence that there are lots of lazy people out there. So I’ll keep helping, thank you very much.
And while we’re still talking about this, here’s another one for the supermarkets: Stop putting stickers on my milk when it’s not in a bag.
There’s nobody standing at the door checking receipts. And if I were trying to shoplift a gallon of milk (presumably by hiding it under my shirt?), do you think I’d be going through the checkout line? So unless you’ve got a secret SWAT team ready to tackle me for daring to walk out with my milk un-bagged, enough with the fucking stickers.
I think you’re misinterpreting the setup at my store. The cashier scans an item with her right hand and then drops it in the bag right next to her with her left. She’s continuously scanning and bagging, and turns the carousel to bring another empty bag next to her. The only items away from her hands are still on the belt waiting to be scanned. All you have to do if you want to help is pull the bags off the carousel and put them in your cart. It actually works quite efficiently. If you can help without interfering, go for it. As for us lazy pricks you mentioned, since we’re in the pit, you can stick it up your ass with a running chainsaw.
It sounds like you’re describing Aldi. I’ve never shopped there (yet), and if it does work like that, it sounds like it’s designed with better efficiency than the typical American stores I’m complaining about.
The carousel system I’ve seen is usually at Wal-Mart, which I try to avoid.
So if you are talking about Aldi or some other place I haven’t yet patronized, I hereby absolve you from being a lazy prick. You’re welcome. But I stand by my characterization of lots of people (besides you, of course!) who obviously cannot be bothered to help bag. I’d even wager there are more of them lately, although I don’t have a guess as to why.
Actually, I do shop at Wal-Mart and that’s the system I’m describing. I accept your apology and no longer wish for you to violate yourself with a chainsaw and hereby apologize for that comment.
And people say the Pit is a vicious and hateful place.
At the Aldi near me, they don’t provide bags at all, you have to bring your own. And there’s no time to bag your items at the checkout, you have to quickly return them loose to your cart, then go to a separate counter and bag them.