Bottom-feeding
Subtitle: A waste of shimmery, iridescent purple gutchies.
Holy shit, I’ve found something that makes shopping at Wal-Mart seem like a high-class experience.
It’s called Bottom Dollar, and it’s really just the new-and-unimproved version of Food Lion. I’d been out running errands, given that the power had gone off in the hacienda, probably due to non-payment but whatever. So a name like Bottom Dollar catches my attention, as in it’s “something I’m always down to.”
Talk about truth in advertising.
So I’d had intentions on catching a movie, but this useless voyage was THAT BAD that I had to come home and blog about it.
It was a pleasant shopping experience, in and of itself. Clean and surprisingly true to its name — good shit at prices they SHOULD be at in the first place. I’d mentally patted myself on the back.
Then came the checkout adventure.
Let’s forget about the woman with the brat behind me who kept bouncing himself into my cart. (I stand beside my cart as a rule. If it goes flying, I ain’t the one getting hit.) I was on the phone with my Mom and was mentally bemoaning the fact that the woman in front of me was writing a check (gah!) when the cashier saw me holding my check card in my hand.
He says to me, “We only take cash or check.”
I was dumbfounded. “You mean in this lane?” I looked at my bounty o’ shit on the conveyor belt.
“In the whole store, ma’am.”
*blink*
“Well, then we have a problem, don’t we?” I said.
My mom is laughing the whole time.
I realize that’s why the woman in front of me is writing a check. I laugh. That’s all I can do.
The next cashier offers helpfully that the credit card terminal that’s sitting RIGHT IN FRONT OF EVERY FUCKING REGISTER! GAH! worked for her last customer, so maybe his would work too. The girl in front of me tore up her check and swiped a card. Go figure, it worked.
So I’m engrossed in my conversation as I swipe my card and wait for Helpful Horvath to do his thing. I’m standing there when he starts laying my groceries in the bottom of the cart, one by one … WITH NO BAG.
This was one of those “You had to be there” moments. If my mom weren’t bearing witness to this, honestly, I would think I were making this up.
So I ask the guy, “Um, don’t you have — oh, I don’t know — BAGS?”
“Yes ma’am.” He stands there waiting.
*blink* “What do I have to do to get one?”
“Those are five cents each.”
*blink.” At this point, my total has gone through — $50 even — and I’d have to charge at least 25 cents. I’d used my card as debit (i.e., typed in my PIN and approved the transaction) so that was that. My head reeled.
“Did you want a bag?” he asked ever-so-helpfully. I was trying to figure out how to kick him.
Mom volunteered, “No, you’re going to eat everything there. What the fuck does he THINK?”
I laughed demonically. “No, I don’t want a bag. Carry on.”
He looked incredulous and started ringing up the next customer. The remainder of my shit sat next to him where a bag should have gone. I waited. I know (now) that the whole idea is for customers to bag their own groceries, but fuck it, there were no signs, no nothing to indicate A) no credit/debit card acceptance or B) you do this yourself.
He had to throw the rest of the shit in my buggy so he could finish ringing up the woman with the kid from hell behind me. But he handed me the pack of gum I’d picked up. I found this hilarious, and giggled so hard I couldn’t breathe. Everyone was staring at me. My mom was howling.
It would be fine if this were the end of the story. Maybe.
BUT WAIT, THERE’S MORE!
Because I hadn’t been tweaked just enough, the story was only half over. I declared I would never shop there again and took my 30 items out to the car.
I tried to shove the buggy through the metal poles surrounding the walkway outside the store, but it wouldn’t fit. I was parked about nine lanes over to the right. And it’s pouring thanks to Hurricane Ernesto emigrating to the D.C. area.
I kept laughing. Mom wondered how I was so cool, but really, this is me. This is an EASY day in my life!
So I now have to figure out how to trot all these items, one by one, in the rain, with cell phone in-hand, to car parked a good 150 feet away.
Fun!
I turned around and asked someone how to get the buggy out to the car. They looked at me like “Cheap Bitch!” as I hadn’t paid for the bags. I couldn’t pay on principle, people. Get used to it.
But they did tell me I had to go back in the store and out the other side to be able to get the buggy on the road. (There’s no sidewalk, how sweet.)
So I trotted back through the store and felt like I should be doing the goddamned Miss America wave, as I took my unbagged groceries in the cart out to the side of the store where I hadn’t parked. And I had to “drive” the cart down the roadway amid midday traffic. Good times!
I had a bag in the car for groceries, if you were wondering. It’s an all-purpose huge black carry-all that held almost everything I’d bought. It’s a trunk organizer, one that I usually put bags IN, but it served me just fine. I just stood there in the rain, putting one item at a time in the trunk and still chattin’ with Mom. Because, really, I needed a debriefing!
But insofar as the movie I’d planned to go see? (“Invincible,” BTW). Fuck it, I had Netflix waiting for me when I got home. I just want to go pull the covers up over my head and not come out for another month. Must EVERYTHING be a fucking PRODUCTION?!?!