Observations in Miniature: People in the Grocery Store

If you see yourself amongst these people it might be time to change your shopping habits.


Bachelor Shopper– Chunky Steak & Potato Soup, Quaker Made Sandwich Steaks, Oscar Mayer Bacon, Frank’s RedHot hot sauce, Cheese Whiz, Wonder Bread, Ball Park Franks, Cheetos, Jiff. Can you say heart attack? No wonder you’re skin is the shade of a dead dolphin. What are you going to do with that bunt cake have a personal tea party? Put that the fuck down and go get some fruit and vegetables. Have you ever heard of fiber? Are you trying to get prostate cancer? No, bacon is not a food group. Are you following Fat Albert’s recommended nutritional guidelines? No wonder men die younger than women. Here’s a clue. The reason your sweat smells like bologna, your BP is 190 over 210, and your depressed is because you’re ingesting enough chemicals, fat and sodium to fell a rhino. Respect yourself. Put down the king sized container of sour cream dip and pick up a container of yogurt. That’s it. Feel that strange sensation in your heart? That’s blood actually working its way through your arteries.

Frantic Snow Storm Shopper – Are you running a home for wayward boys? No? It’s just you, your husband and two children. Then why the fuck did you just buy seven loaves of bread, eight cartons of eggs, and five gallons of milk? Do you subsist solely on French Toast? No? In case you just rolled out of a time machine let me let you in on a little secret. No one in the United States has died of starvation in the last fifty years because they were snowed in. You’re being greedy. A snow storm is not a nuclear holocaust you will be able to emerge from your living room bunker within the next day or two. So, if you really need it buy one loaf of bread, one carton of eggs and one gallon of milk and leave some for other people like me. My grocery shopping day just happens to fall the day before the big ½ inch of projected snowfall and I really am out of groceries. Thank-you for being so courteous.

Coupon Cocksucker – What’s in that briefcase stacked on top of your overflowing cart of groceries? Oh dear God you have coupons wrapped like one hundred dollar bills and they are filling the entire briefcase. I’m trapped in line. There are two people lined up behind me. I’ll be here until the next Super Bowl. What? You say you’re thrifty. No, you’re just annoying. You bought 32 gallons of orange juice and saved fifty cents? I’m relieved you won’t be getting scurvy but if you buy the store brand you will save even more and I won’t have to wait for eons behind you in the checkout line. Let’s be logical and break this down. Coupons, for the most part, entice you to buy shit you wouldn’t have bought in the first place. It’s a marketing ploy. Oh, here’s a coupon for Grandma Remmy’s fried cow testicles. I’d never normally eat them but they’re on sale so I bought six jars. Do you get it? You’re not really saving money! You’re spending money on shit you don’t need because there is a coupon for it! So, have we learned our economic lesson for the day? Good, because since you opened your briefcase of coupons Haley’s Comet just flew by again.

Senior Shoppers – It’s nice to get out of the retirement village and shuffle around during the busiest store hours of the shopping day isn’t it? I have only one question for you. What the fuck were you doing all day long while I was at work! You can’t tell me that bingo and shuffle board took eight hours. Did you just stand and line at the deli for ten minutes hemming and hawing over buying one piece of fucking lunch meat? What are you going to do with that? Slice it up four ways and have a dinner party? Here’s a clue. Buy several pieces of lunch meat then you won’t have to come back to the grocery store every day and won’t be in my way every time I try to push my cart down an aisle. And to the old men specifically, stop fucking flirting with the checkout girls you’re wasting my time and theirs. I don’t give a fuck what Twilight Zone episode you live in you are not going to get to check your rejuvenated Viagra wood out on that eighteen year old checkout girl. Are we clear? Good. Now get in your cart. I’ll push you out to your fifty foot long Cadillac.

Oblivious Mother with Kid in Cart – Hello, earth to mother. Does little Satan want another box of Oreo Cookies dipped in chocolate? Is that what he’s whining about? I have an idea MOVE YOUR FUCKING CART! You don’t need to park sideways across the cracker and cookie aisle. There’s something going on outside that microcosm that is your world and it’s called me trying to get my cart past you so I can get done with my shopping. And another thing. After you get done pulling Hell child off the candy rack in the checkout line, which takes a good ten or fifteen minutes to wrench the Snickers bars and M&M’s from his fists, don’t write a fucking check. Wake up. No one uses checks anymore. Get a fucking check card because inevitably there will be a problem with your check and I will be waiting behind you as the beast that has sprung form your loins sticks his tongue out at me and screams like a cat with its tale caught in a garbage disposal. You’re right my hair is thinning but my patience are wearing even thinner so if you want to be around to see Beelzebub graduate from prison boot camp I suggest you use cash next time.

Sally Wheatgrass (AKA the Overdone Vegetarian lady) - No, don’t stand up in the back of your cart; your pencil thin legs might go right through the grating. Is there any meat in that cart underneath all that foliage? No, soy nuggets are not a mammal. If it didn’t have a tail it doesn’t qualify. You won’t eat anything with milk or eggs in it because it’s murder? Oh, right I forgot I watched an episode of Beasts on the Savannah last week and they showed a loaf of Wonder Bread running from a pack of hyenas. Okay, you’ve taken this hippie Hindu reincarnation shit too far and it’s abundantly clear from your anemic complexion and spindly limbs that you need the advice of a doctor. As an unlicensed physician I recommend ingesting 10 cc’s of lard, preferably hydrogenated beef fat, and to wrap yourself in ten pounds of cooked bacon and olive loaf overnight. Thos canines in your mouth are there for a reason and it is not to viciously tear at lettuce leaves. Your ancestors’ brains grew because they were able to gradually consume more protein, thus improving their hunting skills and their intellectual capacity for preparing meat in tangy sauces. Get it Sally Wheatgrass? Good. Now, join hands with Colonel Sanders and repeat after me: Protein is not my enemy. It is my friend. If the Hindus are right and I did just eat my dead uncle's soul in that bucket of KFC then so what? He tasted like chicken and will come back as something else very soon.