|
"Who uses 3 Gallons of mayonaise?"
- Chris Rock
"We have two sizes of drinks. Small and the 50 gallon
drum. What's the difference in price. A nickel."
- Louie Anderson
"Hello, Mrs. Gorilla."
"Hello, Mrs. Non-Gorilla."
"Been shopping?"
"No, I've been shopping."
"What did ya buy?"
"A piston engine."
"What did ya buy that for?"
"It was a bargain."
- John Cleese and Grahm Chapman, Monty Python's Flying
Circus
April 22nd, 2002
The things that swim up and bite me on the ass.
Let me set up the situation for you.
It's Friday. A whole bunch of us at work are
giving a send off to, coincidentally, two of my last managers.
Both of whom, got fed up with the company at the exact same
time without knowledge of the others' plan of leaving. Both
of whom, decided it was better to work anywhere else but here.
They are the ones that have integrity, common sense, and a lot
more dignity than I have. But I'm straying away from the subject
and starting to rant in a different direction. My days here
are numbered and I embrace the axe.
So, we go to one of our regular Tai Food places,
Wild Ginger in the village. There are about 30 of us there,
the prices are reasonable and the food is good. While we are
waiting for the food to come, we get on the topic of things
that annoy us regularly. My, soon to be former manager, Brian
DeMarzo* gets on a mini rant on Costco. For those of you that
don't buy in bulk in the tristate area, Costco is exactly that.
It is a place where people go to buy things in bulk for a bargain
price.
We don't have a Costco in Freehold, we have Sam's
Club. It's pretty much the same thing. You can go to this place
and you get the giganda economy sized bag of pizza bagels, 30
pounds of oatmeal, or 60 pounds of hot dogs. They won't even
ask questions or look at you funny. These places are ideal if
you are having a party, if you don't like to buy toilet paper
frequently or if you really, really, really, like hot dogs.
Whatever it is you want to buy, these places stock it in large
amounts. If you are a member, you can get them there.
In any event, Brian is going off about how he
hates Costco. Everytime he goes there, it's always crowded,
there are always lines, he can never get to the thing he wants,
and so on, and so forth. Brian's former manger, Ralph (last
name intentionally left out) said that the way to avoid all
of that is to go early in the day, late at night, or on a weekday
when no one is around. That makes the most amount of sense.
And these words came from my lips. "What
kind of an idiot goes to a Costco on a weekend?"
This one. Yup, me. Also known as, El Stupido,
Idiot Del Grande, Sh*t for Brains, and my personal favorite,
Evident Major Head Injury Man.
Two days after I said that I was in Sam's Club
on a mission to fill up my complementary candy bowl with the
economy sized bag of Jolly Ranchers and Double Bubble bubble
gum. The tactic of placing candy in your cubicle reinforces
the idea of an open door policy. I like it because I get to
speak to more interesting people, and candy helps people open
up more. Try it sometime, you will be pleased with the results.
In addition to candy, my wife wanted me to get
hors d'oeuvre-like snacks for the house (in large quantities),
cascade dishwashing detergent (truckload size), vegetarian frozen
food stuff for dinners (army sized) and Advil (U.S. Medic sized).
I also had a (what will turn out to be a month long) craving
for Sabrette's hot dogs. If you go to New York City and get
a dirty water dog off of the street, this is what the street
vendor would be serving you. That with some Gulden's Spicy Brown
mustard or Grey Poupon on a roll and you are all set. Nothing
beats it.
So, this poster child for idiocy (forgetting
what he said on Friday in front of 29 witnesses) ventures into
the land of bulk item goods at Sam's Club. Now, ordinarily,
I like going to Sam's. I usually can get best selling books
at half price and DVD movies for rediculously low prices, not
to mention what I can get for my PC as far as ink supplies and
peripherals. But, habitually, I will go early in the morning
on a weekend or during a weekday. I can get in and out of this
store in about 20 minutes.
Normally.
But now, it's 4:PM, Sunday. And I, being an idiot,
try to park my car in the lot. Just navigating around the parking
lot was a chore. That really should have been the first indication
of my problems. I should have called it a wash and said, "screw
it" and gone on Monday. But, no, the brain damage was far
too insidious and hid behind the concept of immediacy and determination
(GOD! I'm so STUPID!!).
I have determined that in the grand scheme of
things, God put natural speed regulating devices in an individual's
path during times like this. The Almighty's plan is that we
should not go quickly through life without smelling, at least,
the roses. It's the other things that he wants us to smell and
do that I have problems with. So, God put on this earth living
speed bumps. They are usually in the form of a child, old person,
or young person. They are easy to recognise, too. They are the
ones that are either looking up in the sky or straight ahead
with a vacant look. They are wandering aimlessly but they will
be RIGHT IN FRONT OF YOU. They are not looking at you but if
you move left, they move left, if you move right, they move
right... you get the picture. They move slowly. The only way
to get by these "speedbumps" is to be openly rude.
The polite way is to say, "excuse me." That will work
for about 10 minutes. It will eventually turn into "Could
you get the f#$@k outta my way?" I ran into about 3,500
of these bumps on Sunday. I found them in front of the freezer
I needed to get into, the aisle I needed to get by, the books
I wanted to read, and shelves I needed to get up to. I swear,
I could have slipped on the puddle of drool left by these walking
vegetables.
And no Sunday at Sam's Club would be complete
without the obigatory, "babies screaming their lungs out"
chorus. How can something so little with such a small amount
of lung capacity make such an ear splitting sound? I have compared
the sound of bag pipes as the sound of a cat in a blender but
they are NOTHING compared to this sound. It is at the perfect
pitch. It sneaks in under the radar and defenses that we call
natural filtering and finds the part of the brain that offers
the choice, "kill the child" or "go in the other
direction before you do". To avoid a jail term, I opt for
the latter. I heard about 50 of these kids on Sunday. Or at
least, it seemed like 50. It could have been 3.
Back in the days when parental corporal punishment
wasn't frowned upon as much as it is today, I could not even
dream of screaming like that. People over 28 years old remember
this sentence - "If you want to cry, I'll give you something
to cry about." That shut me up when I was a kid. I knew
that there was something behind that threat. How do kids get
away with it today. I can imagine this. "If you cry, no
video games for the rest of the day."
Lord, save me from Dr. Laura.
So, I finish my shopping. I get all of the items
on my list (conveniently held on the Palm Pilot my wife gave
me for my last birthday - Thanks Hon.) I hurry up and get to
THE LINE.
When I was a kid, the one bit of trivia that
I was able to keep in my head was that the Great Wall of China
could be spotted from an orbiting satelite. I think this was
a precursor to the Sam's Club line. This is not the fault of
Sam's Club and Costco. This has to do with the general idiocy
of the human speedbumps in the store. Remember, these are bulk
items. They are large and difficult to load onto the scanner.
There is always the matter of some idiot not realizing that
Sam's doesn't take many credit cards and does not have a way
of paying. There is also the idiot that has too many items and
not enough cash (Sam's has done its level best to accomodate
these people by putting an ATM in the store to get MORE money,
but stupidity has no limit.)
Now realize this. Once you are on line, there
is no escape. You must wait there until the line moves. That
means, no escape from screaming kids and no escape from the
speed bumps. Plus, you get another added feature. You get to
know more than you ever wanted to know about the lives of the
annoying people in front or behind you. Most of them get on
a cell phone and chat away. (And you all know how I feel about
cell phones.) There is also the guy that figures the best way
to kill time is to talk to YOU. He'll be right where you can't
get away. You can't be rude at this point unless you want to
make a situation that will be on the 11 o'clock news then start
at the end of some other line. He'll tell you about his kids.
He'll ask you about your day and what you bought. He'll tell
you everything he's bought and why he didn't get a chance to
brush his teeth that day.
You can never have too much deodorant.
I then got to the register and paid the national
debt of bulk item costs. I always have to keep in mind that
I do this so I won't have to go back there for a while. I do
this because in the long run, it's cheaper. I won't have
to get toilet paper for about 3 months. I won't have to get
paper towels for about 20 minutes. I also won't have to worry
about what's for dinner.
Hot dog anyone?
|
