Watch out! Spill on Aisle 5.

Regardless of where we work, live, and what we do with our lives, we all have to eat. In order to eat, we all must go to the supermarket, yes? If you have ever been to the supermarket, you no doubt know how to do the Supermarket Shuffle.

First, depending on when you go, you have to find a parking spot, which can be, in short, a pain in the ass. You circle the parking lot 3 times, and have to wait for slow people to move the heck out of your way. Dear people, there is such a thing as walking toward the LEFT or the RIGHT of the aisle – I do need to maneuver my car through here, and I can’t do that if you and your 15 kids are walking in the middle of the aisle. Thanks.

Once you find your parking spot, 100 miles away from the store, it’s time to truck up to the store in 100 degree heat, which feels much hotter on asphalt. By the time you get to the store front, you have huge pit stains, the soles of your shoes have melted off, and your hair is immediately in an uproar.

You get a cart, but it has a broken wheel. You grab another one – but that one has sticky residue on the handle. You grab a third one, but it has a used Kleenex in it. You go back and grab the first one, but some big breasted bimbo in stilettos grabs it and gives you a smug smile. Bite me.

Once you have your cart, whatever may be wrong with it, it’s time to maneuver the store. Now, I am a planner, so I make my shopping list according to where things are in the store. It is very difficult for me to continue my shopping if YOU MOVE THINGS IN THE STORE. Let’s just say, in a perfect world, you don’t move things – do you know how much easier that would be for the planners of the world? I would love to get in and out quickly. Thanks.

Once you are going up and down the aisles, you find that they are clogged with people. And by clogged, I mean not even a small amount of Liquid Plumber could penetrate it. You have the elderly gentleman trying to get through with his cart; but he can’t do so because jock strap to his right is trying to figure out what his wife wrote on the list she gave him, and bimbo that stole your cart is on his right gabbering on the phone. On top of it all, you have Michelle Dugger and her 19 kids running up and down the aisle screaming “I want THIS!”. People? PEOPLE! First, please let this poor gentleman in the scooter out, and please move your ass so I can grab ONE can of black beans, which is conveniently located in the middle of the aisle. Maybe I’ll just forgo the black beans this week.

Not only are the aisles crowded, everyone looks PISSED. No one likes the Supermarket Shuffle. Let’s all stop being so mad, shall we? Sure, everyone in the aisle over turns me into a raging lunatic, but in the end, let’s at least throw out a smile or two. We’re all shuffling, after all.

Finally, FINALLY, you make it to the checkout counter. Although there are 150 checkout counters, there are only 4 open. On a Saturday Afternoon. Are we serious? You find a line, behind 4 people with large carts, and once you are finally up next, the person in front of you needs something special that only a manager can do (override a code, ring up something, etc). The checker flips the little switch to blink their freaking light, and we wait 10 minutes. You look at all of the other lines and notice that if you had chosen one of them, you would have been out of their 20 minutes ago. Once you are finally up, the checker talks your ear off – not just little conversation, but unable to ring you up and talk at the same time. It’s another 20 minutes before you are out the door.

You get back out to the parking lot, your soles melt a little more, and you finally get to your car – and you notice that there are NO cart corrals around. This causes you to go searching for the nearest one, because you hate it when lazy people just leave them out. You finally try to back out of your spot, only to be waited on by 3 different cars who all insist that they were there first, and want your spot. Once you have pulled out, you hear normal people yelling at each other and throwing the bird.

And that, my friends, is the Supermarket Shuffle. And it’s a huge pain in the ass. It would just be so much easier if everyone just got out of my way, everyone just throw each other a smile, and go about your day.

I’m going to go make a meal with those black beans that I worked so hard for.

LOL funny, right?!