- Take less than 10 minutes to decide;
- Whilst deciding, park your trolley at one side of the aisle to allow others to pass;
- Talk in conversational tones or lower. Whether it’s a discussion about the properties of latex or witty remarks about reflexively thinking of bulk quantities as “family packs”, bingo-caller volume is overgenerous;
- Note that applicable hand gestures - even at well above anatomically correct heights - are not required;
- And that accompanying sound effects are downright unwelcome; and
- Ensure that now you’ve got them, if you use them it’s with great care.
Most of those rules apply to any shopping. I am particularly amazed at the couples blocking the aisle at the grocery. Even more amazed that when I’ve already politely asked them twice in other aisles to excuse me, they don’t catch a clue in the next aisle.
Of course, I now shop in the wee hours of the morning to try and avoid most of these morons.
I apparently ended up in the copulation supplies line at the grocery store last week. All the other lines had little tubes of aspirin and Tums and whatnot; my line had condoms(3 and 12 packs), lube and pregnancy tests. Fun neighborhood.
I agree, even to the point that it is Pitworthy. A supermarket is a location whereas goods (and not services) are primarily sold to consumers–i.e. people go there to shop. It is not primarily a social club, nor is it primarily a gathering location. It is a place of commerce. When couples (or even singles) gather ‘to chat’ and block aisles, they do so at the inconvenience of others (like myself) and hinder that commerce.
And no, it is not such an egregiously obnoxious issue that I think we ought to elevate it to the Supreme Court, but I do feel it’s pretty damned obnoxious that when I say, “Excuse me. . .” with the intent to pass and am then glared at, I should kick those people in the shins.
“. . . back off lady, I have double coupons, an artichoke, and a side of beef, and I know how to use them. Now gettheferkouttamyway!”
Tripler
Yes, I just want to shop at the supermarket. Is that too much to ask?
That’s what always makes me wonder about people. You see me coming towards you, you see that you have the entire aisle blocked off, a person of, let’s say, average intelligence could put two and two together and get their ass out of my way before I have to say, “Excuse me.” But no, time after time, these cud-chewers just stand there oblivious. I’m starting to suspect that I have vastly over-estimated average intelligence.
Actually, I think it’s the same phenomenon I see with some people walking down the sidewalk. They are walking in a way to block your progress, they are coming straight at you and are leaving you nowhere to go except through a wall or something, but they refuse to look at you in the hope that, if they pretend they don’t know you are there, you will do whatever it takes to go around and not bother them.
In the supermarket, maybe they are hoping that if you don’t make them notice you, you will give up and go around into another aisle.
I’m not saying it’s logical, and I generally don’t let folks get away with this. On the sidewalk, I can be as oblivious as the next person (only when they are being deliberately obstructive) so that they pretty much have to notice and make a little room or else get bumped. In the supermarket I have no problem at all speaking up so they will move themselves to one side.
Roddy
Tell that to whoever added a Starbucks inside my local Safeway.
They put one in our Kroger too, the buttwads.
Yeah, those jackasses, wanting to live in a community and feakin’ talking to people instead of staring blankly at the walls and avoiding all eye-contact so as to maximize the effeciency of the commercial purpose of a store.
Now those jerks are drinking coffee in grocery stores, what level of depravity will I have to endure next?!
They put one in mine also (it’s catty-corner and no more than 1,000 feet from another, so people might have been desperate) but at least they didn’t put it in the middle of an aisle.
The condom section is the one place in our store where I’ve never seen anyone blocking the aisle. I guess people around here have a decent amount of shame. When I was a kid you had to ask the druggist. You really, really had to want sex to do that.
Heh heh. For years hubby and I lived in out-of-the-way locations where we couldn’t buy condoms and many other useful drugstore items. As a result, when we’d be back in the US loading up our suitcases with stuff to take back, we’d end up with drug store shopping carts like this:
24 extra value-pack boxes of condoms
15 boxes of tampons
6 tubes of lubricant
4 packages of Monostat
6 boxes of Ex-lax
…etc…
Of course, that would be a two-year supply, and some of it was “just in case” stocking up on the off chance I did get a yeast infection or something, but still.
I wonder what the people at the checkout counter thought.
The grocery store I prefer for most or my shopping has decided for some reason that the condoms need to be in a locked glass cabinet. Now, I’m not particularly embarassed about making love with my wonderful wife or about wearing condoms, but I really don’t think it’s necessary to make me ask the frickin’ pharmacist to open the frickin’ case. Put them on a shelf like everybody else, jackasses! Until you do, I’m going to continue buying my groceries, then walking around the corner to Walgreens, who, even though they pissed me off by stopping the sale of alcohol, at least let me buy condoms with dignity.
ETA hawthorne, your OP was hilarious. Well done.
Bayard, I suspect the condoms are locked up because of shoplifting. Our local Safeway pharmacy has a locking case for all the family planning stuff/monistat/etc. that’s locked when the pharmacy isn’t open. I can’t think of any other reason for not letting people buy a monistat at 10:00 pm.
Which, when I think of it, is kind of bullshit, because the one thing I would support people shoplifting is condoms.
I agree, shoplifting probably is the reason. But, I wonder why they’re more concerned about someone shoplifting family planning stuff than they are about people shoplifting other items of similar size. I guess condoms get shoplifted a bit more frequently, with people – especially younger people – unwilling to advertise their sexual activity. But do they get lifted that much more than, say, candy?
At one grocery store I noticed that the things locked up included: condoms, pregnancy tests, monistat-type items and rogaine-like products. I guess anything that’s embarassing to buy is a prime target to shoplifters.
The traditional trifecta of shoplifting is Booze, Cigarettes, and steaks. I learned that the hard way working at a grocery store.
Some couples do their grocery shopping together. In others, apparently Mission Control stays at home and gives directions over the cell phone.
On a similar note, it’s foaling season in the horse world. Apparently a typical shopping list for the owner of mares-about-to-pop goes:
12 Fleet enemas
6 tubes of K-Y Jel or “personal lubricant”
2 boxes of rubber gloves
Yeah, this generates :dubious: at the checkout counter.
Is anyone else flashing back to that “Simpsons” scene where Homer is buying all sorts of weird crap, and Marge looks at it and says, “I don’t know what you have planned for this weekend, but I don’t want any part of it?” 
In the case of my husband, it’s an inability to learn, coupled with the fact that I am reluctant to use a wooden spoon on him in public. I’m only partially kidding about the wooden spoon part. We’ve been married over 30 years. We’ve shopped together for most of those years. He will STILL pull his cart up to mine, completely blocking the aisle, when he wants to talk to me for whatever reason. I tell him to put his cart behind mine and then come up to me (we’re both a bit hard of hearing, and it’s easier for us to chat together when we face each other) but that only works THAT TIME. In the very same shopping trip, in the same store, he’ll do it again.
He does have at least average intelligence, he has attended some college, but sometimes he just won’t LEARN unless someone physically hurts him. His mother used to break broomsticks over his head. When I was dating him, and he told me that, I used to feel sorry for him. Now I feel sorry for her.
Anyone got any suggestions? Practical suggestions, that won’t get me charged with assault?
On the plus side, at least they are blocking aisles in the grocery store and not out on the streets having long conversations with other drivers from inside their CARS!!!
(Goddamn blocking the road in order to chat…someone pulls up behind you and can’t get by because there are two people IN CARS taking up the whole goddamn road, but does either one of you have the common courtesy or brains to figure out that people maybe want to DRIVE on the road!)