There’s a couple of threads currently (here and here ) lamenting comments made by servers/clerks about purchases made. I remembered a purchase that I made one time that could have caused comment, but thankfully didn’t.
I was looking to buy a new computer several years ago. At that time, the defacto standard for computer buying was The Computer Shopper. In case you don’t remember or don’t know, this was a magazine approximately 20"x16" and 1-2" thick. It basically looked like a taller, wider phone book, it was huge. So I get one, and I remember that we needed toilet paper. So here I am with a big ass magazine and the jumbo size of toilet paper. Only after I left did I realize what that combo could imply. Good thing I didn’t get the gallon size of pork and beans.
So what purchases have you made (innocent or not so innocent) that raised an eyebrow or even jaw dropping silence?
Take care,
GES
P.S. I hope that it’s not taken that I’m being insensitive to the concerns raised in the two refrerenced threads. It’s just that the above memory struck me, and I thought I’d share.
I bought a bottle of liquid plumber and a baby bottle, got a sidewards glance for that one.
One time I decided to shave my beard then discovered mid process that I did not have enough blades. I went to 7-11 with exactly 1/2 a full beard. The clerk never even blinked.
I was already in line at the check-out counter at the Super Wal*Mart when I realized that the only things I was purchasing were a bag of potpourri and a package of Earl Grey tea.
Frantic to preserve my last remaining drops of masculinity, my eyes darted around at the impulse purchases, trying to find something rugged or tough or at least sharp. There were only impulse-buy-sized-boxes of Tampons, little things of hand lotion, and issues of Cosmo.
The Korean chap at the dairy (corner shop?) just loves to remind me how my ciggies will kill me.
I take his advice depending on my mood.
Generaly I ask him for a packet of poison and he giggles then lectures. On bad days I just point and say “oh well we all have to go someway”. We get on however he reacts…he is a good chap.
White rope (4 lengths), IcyHot, K-Y, a family-sized pack of Durex Ultra-Thin, and a box of fruit rollups. With my then-SO, who happened to be insanely attractive and heavily underdressed.
Of course, the stupid WalMart security voice yells out at the door because the clerck forgot to deactivate the strip in the condoms, so forty people got to watch an old guy check out my girlfriend while pretending to check our purchases.
Just today I passed the One True Test of a Man’s Love for His SO: I went to the store, by myself, and bought tampons for the jillelope. Being the savvy type, I picked up a chocolate bar for her as well.
The OP reminded me of a story a friend told me. Apparently this was told by some actress who was on the Tonight Show a while back; I don’t remember who it was. Anyway:
She’s in New York, staying in a hotel. She looks out the window, across the street, and sees two men kissing each other, hot and heavy, in an apartment across the way. Being the respectful type, she closes the curtains and goes about her business.
Fast forward an hour or two. She needs something or other, so she walks down the street to the corner store. In front of her in line are the same two men she saw making out.
Just this week, I bought oral contraceptive pills and a bottle of Astroglide. The Astroglide was a semi-impulse purchase; I knew I should pick some more up sooner or later, and the line at the pharmacy counter was set up right next to the contraceptive/etc. section. It was only after making the purchase that I realized I could have probably picked out any other random item in the store to include with those and made the clerk do a major double-take.
I worked for my landlord once, doing gardening on his rent houses up and down the street for free rent. One day, he gave me some money to buy some stuff I needed for house maintenance – specifically, a pressure-sprayer unit with adjustable sprayer wand, the kind of thing you use to apply herbicide or bug spray, right?
He also (kind of embarrasedly) asked me to pick him up a tube of Preparation H.
I bought the two items, without ever thinking about what they might represent, taken together, and steered to a cashier I knew personally.
The look on her face was GREAT.
Even better after I realized why she was looking at me in horror, and I said, “Oh, this stuff isn’t for ME…”
I had a 3 week old baby with me and I was buying diapers for her and a pregnancy test for a co-worker. ( She was 16, didn’t feel comfortable buying it)
When I was clerking at a drug store a lady bought a bottle of aspirin, a box of condoms and a pack of smokes.
I was polite to all my customers and never said boo, but she felt the need to explain “before, during, and after…”.
I was the only male cashier at the drug store, and it was funny how the ladies would turn an about-face when they saw me at the cash and go to a woman operated cash at the other end of the store. Guess what ladies, I couldn’t care less that your cart is full of douche and tampons.
When I worked as a cashier I got lots of people buying interesting combinations of items. There is one that sticks out in my memory in particular. Not because it’s suggestive, but because it is totally baffling.
I drove to work that day in a major blizzard. I narrowly escaped getting into several auto accidents. If I’d known how bad it was I would never have left the house.
Once there I was bored stiff because, of course, everyone else was either smarter than me and didn’t even try to go anywhere in their car, or unluckier than me and were stuck on the road somewhere in three feet of snow.
I figured that the only purchases I would see that day were must-haves. A new car battery, maybe, or someone picking up a prescription from the pharmacy. Things like that.
The first guy through my line bought ice cube trays and coat hangers, and nothing else. What, you got some kind of cold-beverage/outerwear emergency brewing?
I once made a purchase at Walmart (back when I shopped at Walmart) that consisted of tampons, a fifth of Jack Daniels, and smokes. That cashier had a hard time looking me in the eye after she saw what I was buying. I didn’t know tampons were so offensive
When I was in college, my GF, best bud and I were designated to make a run for the remaining supplies we needed for a drinking party. So 2 guys and a girl show up at the checkout counter with 4 or 5 different kinds of whipped cream and a jar of cherries. To top it off, my GF is giggling and grinning. The checker just looked at us askance and said “I don’t want to know.”
Last weekend I sent my husband to the store late on a Saturday and he quickly got what was on my list and went to the register. He realized he had these items on the conveyor belt:
A carton of Cool Whip
7 Heath Bars
Baby Oil
12-pack of beer
I was making dessert for a party, and needed baby oil for my very dry skin. Hubby needed beer because, well, I’m 5 months pregnant and he just really needed beer. But that must have looked like we were having some kind of fun night.
I didn’t know tampons were so offensive