35 years ago I needed mayonnaise, and the place I went only had Miracle Whip. (Nuts to you MIT Coop Lobby Shop.) The foul taste still lingers.
Yes, in the best of all worlds this would be a simple, quick experience.
But dammit, there is really no benefit. Buying a bottle of wine? The manager has to come over to approve. I’m buying 12 cans of tuna. Can I scan 1 can 12 times quickly? No! I have to place each individual can on the belt. Can I scan a candy bar and put it in my pocket? No! I have to put it on the belt. Even when I put everyting on the belt, as instructed, I get the “clear bagging area, help is on the way” message. Gah!
Yes, I use coupons. Most coupons work ok. But Del Monte coupons *never * scan. “Wait for assistance.”
I wish they would just get rid of the auto-scans and just hire more cashiers. I mean, I go to a place of business and give them my money, why should I have to do all the work? I expect a minimal level of service, and that includes someone to staff the check-out lines. Phooey on the “self-serve” concept!
I’m having a great time envisioning employees with 2x4’s smacking customers, as well as customers smacking back, and at each other. Races to the checkout, level voiced fucks yous. Great stuff!
My biggest complaint is blocking aisles, and going the wrong way. I treat aisles like the road, stay on the right side unless passing. I cannot tell you how many times I’ve been hit head on by some asswipe going the wrong way.
And I like Miracle Whip.
I also organize my groceries on the belt. I distribute a few cans with a few boxes as to maximize bag useage. I also don’t load the belt up as to cause confusion. And at Meijer the belt tapers at the end, you’ve shopped here before, so don’t express outrage when your bread gets squashed because you loaded the belt like a monkey on a bender.
I usually have one or two of my three kids. Sometimes my husband as well. We do other things before grocery shopping. Trying to maximize our gas, we’ll run as many errands as we can, eat out, go to the park, whatever before we grocery shop. It works for us. But if one child misbehaves, they’ll get a voice in the ear asking them if they want to go out to the truck. No, they don’t. No child has ever gone to the truck more than three times.
I hate grocery shopping as much as the next guy. If I can’t go to the store, shop, and be home and unpacked within an hour, I’m gonna be a little cranky.
But the thing that pisses me off more than anything is the cunt-like substance who leaves the keebler in the cart while she wanders the produce department, and then gives me the stink-eye because I’m (ohmygod!) touching her child to prevent a fatal face plant. Ya skanky douche-bag!
My 4 year old thinks the store is the coolest place is the world. A trip to the store with dad is a prize for good behaviour. He talks Spanish to the produce guy (produce guys teaches a few new words each week), he helps pick out cereals, and generally assists. He also likes the “we pay ourselves line” because it is fun to run the scanners.
Finally, just to make sure that you completely loathe me, the afore-mentioned 4-year-old and I both LOVE Miracle Whip.
We still are more efficient that the college kids (I live adjacent to a campus), the grannies, or the coupon nutcases.
I want, however, to pit the FUCKING CANDY IN THE CHECK-OUT LINE. Why do I let my 4-year old choose the self scan? I don’t have to say “no” to him about buying from the rack. He has learned, I admit, but I still hate that shit. I don’t need 1 cold soda, nor do I need a Milky-Way bar (3 for a dollar!)
I also want to pit the new in-aisle displays of food that makes aisle navigation more difficult. Gee, let us take the aisles that are barely large enough for two carts to pass and add a stack of chili?
Finally, I pit the stores that broke the unions. I get it, price competition forces you to dump the high cost union employees. thanks to your drop in pay (half of the old union wage scale), I can see the impact as the new employees exhibit a measurable drop in intellectual capability. You get what you pay for Albertons, Ralphs, and Vons.
Please. use. one. plastic. bag. per. item. I. love. that. Ass. bitches.
I think you’ve just described every interaction I’ve had at my local Kroger.
Favorite moments:
[ul]
[li]Bagger-lady forces a large, plastic wrapped beef roast into the plastic sack. The plastic sack, though, was supported by the small metal frame-thingy, so beef roast gets completely ripped open as she’s shoving it in the bag. Her solution? Shrug and then double bag it.[/li][li]Same fucking bagger-lady throws my sacked produce into the cart from about three feet away. Bananas and apples.[/li][li]Chatty cashier guy who tried to inquire as to what I plan on doing with everything I buy.(Wow! What’s this? Ginger root?! What do you make with it? Wow! What’s this? Tomatilloes?! Lather, rinse, repeat)[/li][li]The Pringles are located on the greeting card aisle, all other potato chips and snacks are on the other side of the store 
[/li][/ul]
Hate envelopes me like a warm, comfortable blanket made of stinging nettles and salt when I enter the preternaturally slow opening automatic doors.
I wish my store did ecart. Assbitches.
My 5-year-old and I have a similar swell time at the grocery store when we go. So do my 3-year-old and I.
Taking my 3-year-old and 5-year-old together to the grocery store, however, is hell on earth. Hence my mention in my previous post, which I thought was relatively unsubtle, of taking one child to the grocery store at a time.
This is why (in defiance of an earlier poster) I always go to the self check out with my produce. I actually know how to punch in the PLU or use the item look-up button, so it is much faster than having the cashiers stare at me in amazement:
“What is this? A zucchini? We sell these here? Where did you find it? Is this yellow thing a zucchini too? How do you spell that again? Oh, this tomato is organic?” It’s not like this is even exotic produce! I shit you not, I have had cashiers *call other people over * to marvel at my mystical, factastical, mysterious zucchini. Ugh.
That’s your own fault for buying zucchini. Since the only possible reason for trying to buy it is to fuck with the cashier.
At my local Pathmark the staff NEVER acknowleges my exisitence. Just barely when I’m actually physically paying them and even then they are talking to their friends.
I take it you don’t live in New Hampshire.
I hate shopping. I sympathize with everybody’s gripes. As Larry the Cable Guy put it: If you ever stick up a Wal-Mart, you’ll never have to yell, “Nobody move!”
And I like Miracle Whip. 
And now, the rant du jour:
My dearest ShopRite. How I love you and all of your low-priced items inside. I’m a huge fan of your deep discounts, where a focaccia is marked down to 50 cents. But, alas, this is not about your attempts to get rid of expired perishables. No, this, instead is about the horrid little trolls you have making the sammiches for purchase in their own plastic cases. When your largest customers are either the military fort a mile away or the wealth of contractors, perhaps it’d be best to actually make available lunch sandwiches during lunch time. We ALL take the lunch surrounding the noon hour. Why do you insist on making the sandwiches available from 2pm on? Now that there’s a time stamp on the label, it’s become comical. Please, just have someone start at 9am, and I’m willing to bet word will spread like wildfire, instead of the “ShopRite? All their shit is day old.”
Or, at least discount it down from $6 for a turkey and cheese.
The store closest to my house stocks the coconut milk in the baking good aisle. Bottom shelf. Next to the sweetened condensed milk.
I ask you.
One day, I finally got fed up with watching people not return their cart to an appropriate place. I was approaching my car and observed a woman get into the car beside mine, having left her cart between our vehicles; blocking my driver’s-side door.
Before she could get settled and start her car, I rolled the cart behind her car.
Then I got in mine and drove off.
And… was she MAAA-AAAAD!
The express lane is for those of us with 10 items or less, not assbitches that can’t count!
An old joke, but:
In a Cambridge, Mass. supermarket, a young man (obviously a student) is standing in a line designated “10 items or less” while pushing a shopping cart filled with dozens of items.
A man waiting behind him turned to his neighbor and said “Either he’s from Harvard and can’t count, or he’s from MIT and can’t read.”
So here’s my rant: Change your signs at the checkout lanes. It’s 10 items or fewer. Especially when I’m buying my Grey Poupon…
The last thing I need when waiting on the espress line with my four items at lunch time is someone ahead of me with fourteen items and a cell phone. If you point it out to them, they say “Oh, it’s two orders.”
Where is the other person hiding? Under the cart?
Oh, I can think of at least one other reason.