I had gone a couple of weeks without having an incident in my local Hannaford. The supermarket is where I get some of my best stories—like the one about the man who paid for my groceries because I had “put up with him.” All I did was laugh at his jokes!
Sometimes I think I should publish a collection of my anecdotes. I would call it “It Happened at Hanford.”
Of course, because I thought my creative wellspring had dried up, I then witnessed a doozy.
I was in the express line, as I often am. The Hannaford is near my residence and also on the way home from work, so I usually buy just a few items at a time—whatever I need that day.
The woman in front of me was wearing UGGs—those wide, short Australian boots. Nothing wrong with that, except it was 84 degrees outside. When the customer in front of this woman moved on, she did not move her carriage forward. She had a sort of wallet on a lanyard around her neck and was searching through it.
This did not bode well.
Next, she began muttering that she couldn’t find something. The cashier waited patiently. The wallet seemed jam-packed with plastic cards and coupons. The cashier noted that the customer had a number of coupons for The Children’s Place store.
“Would you like some?”
The cashier demurred, but the woman gave her two anyway. At this point, I became annoyed. Why was this woman giving the cashier coupons when she hadn’t even moved her carriage forward? She hadn’t even found whatever card she was looking for. Finally she moved ahead and inserted a card into the reader. As she did, she asked, “What’s the date?”
Since it was near the end of September, I wondered if she was using a SNAP card and was concerned about the balance. As the cashier didn’t know, I told the customer what the date was. She then said to the cashier, “I’m sorry, those coupons have expired.”
It had been a long day, and at this point I was ready to rip my hair out, strand by strand. I was absurdly relieved when the card went through, as I was sure there was going to be some further delay. Finally the cashier handed the woman her receipt and she walked away from the checkout—without her groceries.
The cashier called her back before she walked right out of the store.
Now, I could sympathize with this woman if I knew she had a mental illness or was developing early-stage dementia. Certainly those are two possibilities for her behavior. But I also wondered if she was trying to pull off some sort of scam. The problem with this theory is that I don’t know what that could be, unless she was using a stolen credit card.
In fact, that particular day was just ripe with people acting out. There was a guy in a Red Sox cap who reached in front of me for an item no less than three times. He was tall, and appeared to be the only man wearing such a hat in the store that day. That’s how I knew it was the same guy.
Then, as I tried to exit the parking lot, I noticed a woman was trying to back some ungodly huge vehicle—a truck or SUV—into a parking space. As I waited to turn into her lane, she backed in and drove out, backed in and drove out .…
finally gave up and turned into the next lane. Out of the corner of my eye I saw her back in and drive out and back in and .…
Sweet fancy Moses. Don’t drive a vehicle that’s bigger than you can handle!
Any supermarket is a microcosm of the world. Or, as my husband, Paul, likes to say, “The Hannaford is proof that it takes all types.”
The grocery store seems to present an opportunity for people to be rude. Perhaps it’s because many people hate to shop and so they are crabby as they push their carriage through the aisles. One time I accidentally pushed mine too close to another shopper and nudged her heel. I apologized profusely, but she said, brusquely, “Watch where you’re going.”
“I said I was sorry.”
“You’re not watching where you’re going.”
Alrighty, then. I am getting away from you as fast as I can.
Some people just bring a smile to my face. Take the woman who was buying two quarts of eggnog in early October. “I’ve already been through two,” she confessed to the cashier. I thought of a friend who had recently posted on Facebook that she couldn’t believe eggnog was on the shelves already. I agree. It’s not even Halloween yet!
My friends enjoy my Hannaford stories and have even begun to share their stories with me. One was behind a man who not only smelled bad but kept hacking and spitting phlegm (we hope) into a wadded up paper towel. She was afraid she was going to contract the plague, or at the very least, tuberculosis.
So, if I ever do write “It Happened at Hannnaford,” it might have to be an anthology. Wherever people shop, life happens, and makes for darn good stories.
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