Grocery Store Rant

I love self-checkout. I think it was a brilliant addition to grocery stores everywhere. I think, however, you should be certified to use them. After all there is a reason they’re marked twenty items or less.  They’re supposed to be fast!!!! 

I hate the people who get in the line and can’t get their items to scan. Or the people who bring items that are so big they need the hand scanner. Or the people with five hundred coupons. Or even worse, the people who finally get to the end of their stuff and either can’t figure out how to pay or are painstakingly feeding in ninety-seven cents in change, a twenty, a five, and four ones. Yikes.

All those people end up needing the supervisor of the self-checkout to come help them. If you need help, you should’ve just used the regular checkout!!

My other grocery store pet peeve? Those reusable grocery bags.  In theory, I think they’re awesome.  I don’t know about you, but I can never remember to grab them and put them back in my car.  On the rare occasion I do bring them in the car, I forget to bring them in the grocery store.  And on the even RARER occasion when I bring them inside, they never match what I end up buying. Not only that, its super awkward to give them to the cashier to try to fill. They flop all over the place and if you’re like me, you got one or two as a giveaway, maybe another is insulated, and some are bigger than others.

I like the idea of recycling as much as the next guy, which is why my plastic bags always serve double duty. They get crammed in a spot under my sink to be used again to carry something else, or to contain something disgusting on its way to the trash.  Those reusable grocery bags however, they just sit in my pantry, taking up space.

How about you? How do you feel about self-checkout and reusable grocery bags?

P.S. You may wonder, on a day like today, why there is nothing here about 9/11. Pretty much I feel that I have nothing meaningful to add to the conversation. Everyone, after all, has a story about where they were that fateful day and most are the same story of how you stopped, watched, gasped and cried. You may, however, be interested to read this, or this, or maybe even this.