Never join a grocery store check-out line containing a woman of advanced age clutching a large, black purse.
Also avoid a line — no matter how short — containing a cart full of pre-schoolers; or a man holding a calculator; or a woman with a box of coupons under her arm; or an angry guy with a moldy looking package of lunchmeat in his hand.
The woman with the luggage-size purse will have just two or three items to check out, but proudly does not use charge cards. She will spend 20 minutes digging through that purse to find her checkbook, only to discover she has no checks left.
She will then decide to pay with cash and insist on counting out the exact amount from the loose change mixed up with the loose mints in the bottom of that handbag. She will come out a dollar short.
The distracted woman with the cart full of pre-schoolers will leave the line two or three times after all of her groceries have been scanned to pick up items she forgot and to return the bag of candy Freddie hid under the loaf of bread.
The man with the calculator will double check the sales receipt and argue the chewing gum was scanned twice. Once convinced there was no double charge, he will dispute the sales tax.
The woman with the box of coupons will not start matching them up with her purchases until the checkout is completed. About 10 minutes of sorting will produce six coupons, four of which will prove to be out of date.
Then she will remember a coupon in a newspaper insert she left in her car and will ask to “run out to the parking lot” to retrieve it.
The guy with the moldy lunchmeat will slap the package down on the counter and shout out the story of his life-long frustration with “this lousy excuse for a grocery store” while the clerk tells him he needs to get a refund at the customer service counter. This will make him angrier and he will demand to see the manager, while the gallon of ice cream in your cart melts and runs all over the floor.
If you see one of these people in even a short line, know that a longer line is often a shorter line.
Or, if you are brave and have just a few items, you can try the “15 items or less” line. However, the people in this line count 30 cans of beans, 10 boxes of cereal and 40 assorted packages of meat as one item each.
And, of course, the clerk in this “quick check” line has only been employed by the store for two days and has not yet learned to operate the cash register.
Also, he is just 18 and is not allowed to check out the case of beer and the two quarts of Old Crawdad Bourbon the man in front of you is buying. He needs help from the manager, but the manager is busy listening to the guy with the moldy lunchmeat over at Checkout #4.
After the manager finally arrives to scan the booze, the customer’s charge card will be rejected by the computer. He will try three more cards and none of them will work. He will try to use his food stamps and the manager will be called back again to explain that such a purchase is illegal.
In frustration you might choose to use the self-checkout, because you only have a can of beans, a gallon of melted ice cream, a package of cheese and a box of Froot Loops.
Then you will remember the irritating woman hidden inside the self-checkout machine who screams at you in the voice of your third-grade teacher every time you try to scan something — flashing a yellow light above your head to call over a clerk, who has abandoned her post to call a friend on her cellphone.
Now is the time to accept the reality, stay calm, sit down on the floor and have some Froot Loops.
Bud Herron is the retired former editor and publisher of the Daily Journal in Franklin. Contact him at [email protected].
