The grocery store on Christmas Eve.

9:30 in the morning. Circle the lot twice; find someone pulling out; wait for the spot; watch in amazement as someone steals it. Continue circling the lot; mutter under breath. Find a spot by vulturing.

9:40. Walk into the store. Order coffee. Watch as a dad and a four-year-old son joke and laugh while waiting for coffee/hot chocolate. Eavesdrop on a call: “Honey, I’m just about done. Did you think of anything else you need at the store? Okay, I’ve got your coffee now, and I should be home in about 15 minutes. Love you.”

9:45. Sip coffee. Realize it’s lukewarm. Ask barista for hot coffee. Feel slightly guilty when barista fails to put the lid on the hot coffee and scalds himself. But the hot coffee is GOOD, so at least his sacrifice was not meaningless.

Shopping. People, this is not amateur hour. I know you want the kids and SO out of your hair, but don’t send them to the store unless they’ve been trained. It’s tricky during the holiday season – lots of carts, lots of displays in the already-narrow aisles. I saw one man who was a superstar – he seemed to have this innate sense of the rhythm of movement down an aisle. He dodged and darted, and never slowed down, never hit anyone or any display. But he was the exception.

Also, do not abandon your cart so that it’s blocking the aisle. Put your cart somewhere else while you go get what you want.

White pepper. It’s not that exotic. Maybe not a holiday item, but seriously? Why can’t I get white pepper?

Sir, the organic apples are more expensive than the regular apples because they’re organic. Also, the stocker probably doesn’t control the price, so it’s not really worth the time to argue with her over it.

Thank you for having every check out aisle open and all the baggers working. Probably the best part of the shopping experience.

10:23. Walk out to car. Watch the vulture watching me unloading my car. Watch the vulture gesticulate angrily at me for walking away from my car to return the cart where it belongs, which, frankly, would have been easier to do if said vulture weren’t blocking the cart roundup, necessitating a walk to a cart roundup farther away. In response to said gesticulations, walk back to car sloooowly.

Note to self: next time, plan better and shop earlier in the week.

I have to walk two miles to the store in a foot of snow…uphill both ways!

I nearly had murder in my heart this morning at the grocery.

Last night I attempted a trip to Target to get 3 items. It took me almost 45 minutes to travel the little over 3 miles. Besides roads covered with ice and snow, the traffic was dreadful. I finally make it inside and from the entrance I notice there are no lines at the checkout. Good, this means I can get in and out. I take 10 steps and can see the aisle behind the checkouts. The line of folks waiting to pay stretches the length of the store and disappears aground a corner. Screw that, I don’t need the stuff that bad. I went back this morning and was in and out in 10 minutes.

After a brisk walk down the river valley, I decided to bake some cookies for Christmas tomorrow… a task which required the purchasing of eggs at 6:20 PM. Why 7-11 only charged me $3.50 for a dozen I don’t know; my brother works at Safeway and I was teasing him that they close at 6, but he should buy a few flats of cranberry sauce and sell them for $5 each to the people getting there at 6:15. Would make a tidy profit and be out of there by 6:30. :wink:

I have a long holiday tradition of going to the store on Christmas Eve and, on my way out, exclaiming “It’s a Christmas miracle!! (That I didn’t kill anybody in there!)” I went today but luckily only had to get something from the pharmacy, which didn’t have a line, and I was in and out! Well, except for those people standing slack-jawed in the doorway, including an employee, and oh yeah that really old guy that, for some unknown reason, just had to get in front of me and then walk as slow as humanly possible, and the jerks in the parking lot that think I’m a weeble and if they hit me I will just come right back up and move on.

I hate going to the store at Christmas.

I went to the P.O. this morning, and was 2nd in line for the APC. Got two large envelopes mailed very quickly. I then went around to the county offices to get a car tag, where I was pleasantly surprised to find no line, and all 4 windows open. The lady waiting on me even got off of the phone for me!

Again at the gas station there was no line, and the regular gas was priced $1.49.

Too bad regular days don’t go so well!

In a moment of insanity, I decided to go to a local mall yesterday to see if any Christmas spirit would rub off. The place was nearly deserted. I wandered into Best Buy to see if they carried the Canon Pixma iP100 mobile printer. They do! But they don’t have any in stock. Of course not: why would you stock something at Christmas?

Clerks looked uniformly annoyed and frustrated. The few customers I saw looked uniformly annoyed and frustrated. A few were even rude. Multiple shoe stores and clothing outlets, and a whole buttload of China-made-crap stores. All empty, or nearly so.

The theaters were closed.

I walked all around the mall just for the exercise, bought a copy of Halo 2 for myself, and left.

When you walk back to your car in the parking lot, with your keys dangling from your hand, it’s almost as if the music from Jaws is playing as a car will follow you for your spot.

Duh, duh. Duh, duh.

Spouse goes to store in early afternoon, finds parking lot completely full, with many sharkers prowling up and down the rows and decides to bail and try later.

Later comes at about 6:15 after picking me up from the train station. Lot’s still full and sharkers are still at it. Where’s my harpoon? Ah! She’s pushing an empty cart to the curb. Where’s she going? Yes! Wait for her to back out and we snatch the spot.

Get inside. What’s this? The deli is closing! No problem since we didn’t need anything from the deli. But we do need seafood. If the deli is closing, then the fish counter may also… RUN!!!

Attention shoppers! We will be closing in 30 minutes. Please make your final selections and come to the cash registers so we can go home!

Yipes! Wasn’t expecting to hear that at a store that’s open 24/7.

Lights are out at the fish counter, but Fish Guy is still there, pulling trays out of the display case. Quick scan… I’ll take all of the shrimp and all of the scallops, please. (There was not quite two pounds of either.) Thank you, Fish Guy!

Attention shoppers! We will be closing in 25 minutes!

We need chips because someone ate the two bags I bought on Sunday.

Attention shoppers! We will be closing in 20 minutes. Please make your final selections…

Did you get eggnog? Where’s the eggnog? Wouldn’t you think they’d put it somewhere near the milk? Oh, here it is, but all they have is “light”… Get two cartons anyway!

Attention shoppers! We will be closing in 15 minutes…

Tangerines! I almost forgot the tangerines! And limes for the beer!

Attention shoppers! We will be closing in 10 minutes. Get your ass and your damn groceries in line at the cash registers NOW or we’re gonna lock you inside the store until Friday!

They didn’t actually say that, but you know they wanted to say it.

By the time we were done, the store was closed and marauding hordes of hungry Mongols were vainly trying to get in with the old lie “I just need one item!” but were being turned away.

I want a gracery store that has a coffee shop in it!!!
My daughter and I went to the mall when I got off work xmas eve morning to hit Bath & Body so I could use my coupon. Parking lot was full, but I got there just in time to get a close parking space as someone was backing out. Go me!

Get in and find a store selling everything half-off (going out of business) so I stop in and pick up a couple DVDs and an 2g MP3 for my daughter. One register open, long line but it was worth it.

Bath and Body. Sale! Items picked over so not a whole lot to choose from. Grabbed some things so my other daughter would have a little something to open (she wasnt planning on coming up for xmas so it was last-minute) at the house & of course will need to stop and get cheapy stocking. Long-friggin-line! Not only that but I didnt notice the clerk failed to give me the sale pricing on items :mad: until I was already home. greeeeaaaat!

Stopped by steak house and picked up the dinner rolls I ordered through a fund raiser. They were packed! Glad I wasnt trying to eat lunch there.

Stopped by Wal-fart and get stocking and last minute stuffers plus something for dinner tomorrow. Out of town daughter calls to let me know she changed her mind - she only has one day off and she doesnt want to go anywhere. NOt GOOD. I can empathize with the not wanting to go anywhere because i work all the time feeling BUT, I am extremely concerned because her ex boyfriend (my little red-headed-almost-son-in-law) died of a drug overdose a couple of days ago and the funeral is Friday. She’s been very depressed. I did my best to remain understanding without making it sound like I was trying to lay a guilt trip on her when I was trying to encourage her to come and be with family.

Stopped by PO to pick up packages of goodies that came in.

Went home, unpacked car, growled at youngest daughter for hating her EArth shoes I picked up for her - hoping she would overlook the “not in fashion” look and realize they support her feet! Growled at hubby-thingy to turn down his game so I could sleep before having to go back to work that night.

Overall - I will not being doing this again next year. Or at least I hope I will have a day job by then. Traffic was horrible, and I was getting tired and cranky (because I felt my arch tear again) & was past my beditme when I got home!

I got to the mall at about 8:30 on Christmas Eve because my least favourite Christmas irritation is having to drive around and around, scouring the carpark for a spot. Returned to my car at about 9:30 with a large item I wasn’t prepared to carry around for the next four or five hours and got murderous looks from the vultures who were indignant that I wasn’t actually leaving just yet.

I made a quick stop at Dollar General yesterday, to get
new jammies for me.

Lot was full, store was packed. Looked like everyone had
waited till Christmas Eve to shop the Dollar General.

I am bad…I hate shopping!

Went to the mall last weekend to people-watch. Plenty of shoppers, but still plenty of parking. Not much sign of frazzle. No sign of Great Depresion 2.0, which I had partly expected.

Went to the grocery store yesterday (24th) afternoon. A little busy, but otherwise ordinary. Got my goods & found a checker who was just finishing the previous customer, so no waiting.

Many people were streaming into & out of the Target next door, but it wasn’t a mob.

Sunny, no glop on the ground, and 35-ish degrees. All was well.
Life in the 'burbs is simple that way.

Shopping is bad enough; on Monday, World Market had long lines at all checkers, and were sold out of the gift basket I intended to get, so I had to build my own.

Even worse, I work in a supermarket. The “epicurean” chilled prepared stuff we sell wasn’t too busy, but we could barely have kept the cheese cases sort of full even if we didn’t have people asking what cheese goes with their wine (or vice versa), or what assortment would make a good plate for a party, or why we’re out of that cheese whose name they don’t remember, or where the dips are, or whether we have horseradish or caviar, or …

It was a long two days. One nice thing was that I was thinking I’d be late closing, but our manager Linda said we would all be leaving at the same time, so I suddenly had four or five people from the hot-food department asking what they could do to help. We were out of there seven minutes after the store closed!

I hate shopping any day of the year but Christmas eve and Black Friday are never done with me. I don’t need the aggravation of trying to get around wide bodies when I’m trying to get into the Holiday spirit.

It was nuts at my grocery store.

I had to stop at Walmart after work (we only had a half day, yippee!) to pick up my Dad’s gift which had come in in the nick of time (I ordered a picture puzzle for him). It was surprisingly not bad there, no worse than it is on a busy Sunday though electronics was a gong show. They didn’t have the game I wanted anyway, so I bought the other stuff I came in for and left.

I then had to go to the dollar store for some birthday wrap (today is Velociraptor’s birthday) and I was getting my Mom’s gift wrapped when I got a call saying we needed milk… I thought Safeway would be quicker than going back to Walmart. How wrong I was.

I spent the same amount of time standing in line at the grocery as I did wandering and standing in line at Walmart. By that point my arm was killing me from the bags and the milk, and it was so packed that I was melting in my coat… but I couldn’t take it off because there was nowhere to put it. At least the people around me were nice, so we had a chat before I trudged back to my car and home.

I had to do some last-minute grocery shopping, too – and yes, it was a complete madhouse. Fortunately I’m a pro, and can bob and weave, deke and drive around obstacles with the best of 'em. Unfortunately that means I’m the one that get galled at the sheer number of idiot shoppers that seem to exist in an enclosed bubble of light that illuminates nought but a 10-foot radius around them, thus enabling them to:

  1. Park their cart on one side of the aisle while they stand directly next to it examining in great detail every product on the shelves of the other side,

  2. Move at a speed no greater than 1/10th of their normal walking speed – which itself is none too hasty – directly down the center of the aisle such that there is just enough room on either side of them to fool you into thinking you have room to pass,

  3. Make sudden, frequent stops,

  4. Examine the entire length of the aisle from one end of it while stopped directly across it, and

  5. Look everywhere but where they’re going.

And each and every one of them is surprised when another human unexpectedly intrudes into their bubble of light. Even when they realize they’re in your way and move to let you pass, they’ll do the exact same thing two minutes later, like they’re apologetic that they’re blocking your way, but can’t seem to grok the mechanism by which you were blocked, or link it to themselves.

And that’s on a good day. I still made it through. I deliberately went to a cashier to cash out though. It’s days like those when it is a guarantee that every other person who uses the self checkout will become completely baffled by it and require assistance no fewer than three times per 10 items they’re scanning.

Cynical? Hell, no. Just observant.

If you think grocery shopping on Christmas eve is bad, try Christmas day. There’s only one grocery store open. Since you’d think it would be none, you wouldn’t expect to find the store packed with people. But you’d be wrong. There were people running the length of the store, waiting in line to check out. And while there were more checkers than normal, it probably took most people 30 minutes to an hour to stand in line to check out of the grocery store. . . longer than it would any other day of the year.

Merry Christmas!

Seriously…the way the news has portrayed the dismal shopping scene this year you’d think the malls were all but empty. Not so says evidence in this thread.