supermarket follies The past few months I have had several wtf moments in supermarkets. Today the bagger dropped a tiny portion of the kale that I'd bought onto the floor, stepped on it accidentally while trying to pick it up, then tossed it into my grocery bag with the rest of the bunch when he thought I wasn't looking. A few days ago, the clerk at that same store interrupted ringing me up to pry the cap off the antiperspirant I was buying SO THAT SHE COULD SNIFF IT. The cap didn't come off easily, so she was struggling for some time, all the while ignoring my perturbed looks. A few weeks before that, the bagger at another supermarket flipped the box of tampons I had purchased hand-to-hand up in the air OVER HIS HEAD about a hundred freaking times while he waited for the rest of the stuff to come down the conveyer. He seemed oblivious to the fact that it was a box of tampons. I am so glad that I wasn't 14 when this happened. A few months ago, a mentally retarded bagger at Safeway hollared at me for five minutes straight after I forgot my wallet, went home to get it,returned 15 minutes later and discovered that said bagger had already reshelved all of my purchases. The checker had agreed to hold my stuff for 20 minutes, so I had actually returned early. The strange little bagging guy kept yelling, "You never came back! You never came back!" at the top of his lungs, although (it was plain to see) I had "come back" and was standing in front of him inquiring as to the whereabouts of my basket. This little man yelled me out of the store, and yet not one other employee moved to stop his harangue (the checker just shrugged and smiled). Bizarre and embarassing! Is it just me? Or have supermarket employees gotten stranger in recent years?

that post made me so incredibly happy YOU NEVER CAME BACK, YOU NEVER CAME BACK! *clutching myself*

Oh it was mortifying! I couldn't get a word in edgewise. He was shouting and waving his finger at me, and I swear everyone in the store thought I had done something horrible to the guy. And the cart had been full to the brim! Which means that he would have had to have started reshelving its contents almost immediately upon my leaving the store in order to have finished in the fifteen minutes that I was gone.

likely they thought you ditched him on a date Went to the bathroom and never came back. Poor little guy.

Or left him on the steps of the orphanage with a note that said, "Please do not reshelve."

& all b/c he was mentally deficient! No wonder he is bitter at you. You'll have to spend the holidays with him now.

time was I would have invited him to Thanksgiving and my annual Holiday Cookie Party. Alas, those days are over. I've become jaded and cautious in my old age.

you'd be finding cookies on random shelves around your house for years to come.

I need to go shopping with you. I don't have such intriguing interactions with store employees.

You should see the service I get in restaurants!

I would buy you dinner just to experience it

I think it only works if I pay. Anyone who eats out with me regularly will tell you that the chances of me actually getting what I order are less than x/x.

I'm good with that. :-)

thanks for sharing, mine are as an employee.. Working in a culturally diverse neighborhood..we'd get all kinds. Once, these little spanish guys would come shopping together..till there was just one making weekly visits, and he'd brag of his mighty van. I had to see, so I helped him out with his groceries to see a small Chevy Van (early x's)..and when he opened the side doors, there was red velvet everywhere and yellow trim with yellow pom-poms...even a mattress (I think), with a red satin throw on it.. I put groceries in and gave him thumbs up, and said good luck dude. Maybe the look of disgust I was trying hide showed through, but he never came back. Another time, years earlier, the market was changing ownership and they were in midst of renovations. I had had a longggg day and when I went to close the HUGE glass entrance door, which always required a little hip to close it..I didn't realize how much hip I gave it, but the whole thing cracked. That got me out me tired stupor pretty quick. So when customers came in the next day, they'd ask me what happened or if it was a revengeful customer...uh...uh..I nodded..who'd believe a x year old girl would do that...

The van sounds kinda cool I think some swinger parents of a friend of mine had a similar one in the x's

you're funny.