Uh wn shpn.
That’s about as verbal as I feel right now. I just went on the shopping trip from . . . well . . . a difficult-to-relax kind of place.
It was so bad that I had to call my husband and ask him if I could just vent for a few minutes.
I love that man and how he totally understands and lets me be me.
Basically, picture the most difficult-to-move monster kid-car cart. Picture a store that I never noticed had so many little potholes in the floor. Picture 4 unbelievably heavy 24-packs of bottled water in that already difficult-to-move cart. (Had to buy 4 to get the 5.00 coupon back.) Picture multiple teetering cardboard displays as I run into them.
Picture me filling my cart way past the top in an effort to restock our totally bare pantry. Picture me obsessively counting to 50 to be sure I am purchasing the right number of qualifying items for the big sale.
Picture me smiling nervously as I snatch my huge packages of ground beef out of the hands of the very helpful sacker who is about to stick his finger through the cellophane as he puts them on the conveyor belt. Picture the same very helpful sacker shoving them in a bag and literally, yes, literally, slinging the bag with the two huge packages of ground beef in it . . . onto the top of the beyond-full/piled-high/no-level-spot cart of groceries. Picture him not even looking at what he’s doing. Picture the ground beef falling to the floor. Hear the splat. Picture him telling me they’re fine, and me smiling graciously while I explain that in fact, they are busted open.
Picture him kindly grabbing them to go replace them. Picture me trying to think of a nice way to keep this from happening. Picture me talking to the helpful manager and explaining that the ones he brought back are nowhere near the same size as the ones I paid for.
Picture me taking my three year old out of the cart and carrying his choices back to make my own choices. Picture my not-terribly-surprised face when I discover that he has placed my busted ones back into the case. Picture me trying to add 8.94 and 9.75 in my head while my 3 year old jabbers and asks me questions. Picture me trying to find two more packages that add up to whatever 8.94 and 9.75 add up to.
Picture me realizing when I get back to the front of the store that my 5.00 coupon did not print. Picture me talking to myself in an effort to decide whether it is worth it to fight for the 5.00 coupon when it was this coupon that was the entire reason I pushed the incredibly heavy water all around the store. Picture my relief when the cashier knows exactly what the deal is supposed to be and tells the manager that I should have received the coupon. And finally, picture me trying to push/pull that idiotic cart out of the store while the aforementioned sacker waves and says “Sorry about that!” while not helping me push the cart.
But hey, I’m glad I went today instead of waiting to go through all of this on my normal shopping day after Bible Study when my three year old would have been pushing naptime. I probably would have had to add a sentence like, “Picture my head exploding.”
So I guess I needed to vent again.
Thanks.
But here’s my menu plan (made possible by the fact that we actually now HAVE SOME FOOD).
Monday – Hamburger patties and mac-n-cheese (I’ll cook all of our ground beef tonight)
Tuesday – Grilled Chicken Breasts and hash brown casserole (I’ll trim and divide all of the chicken I bought.)
Wed – Spaghetti using the ground beef that I’ll cook up tonight
Thursday – Chicken fajitas using chicken breasts that I’ll grill on Tuesday
Friday – Out to Eat!!!
Saturday – Leftovers
Sunday – Superbowl party fun foods
I’m linking this up to Menu Plan Monday at Orgjunkie.com
Hope it helped to vent…go right ahead. We all need to do that from time to time. I would love for you to join me for Crock Pot Wednesday whenever you can. There's a giveaway going on.
I'm so glad you made it home safely!!! Mercy, I have had those sorts of days. BUT – mine usually culminates at the checkout stand where I realize that my wallet is in fact in my Bible study bag which is on my dryer at home which is 30 miles from the Wal-Mart where I am standing. I actually have a spare checkbook in my glovebox for this exact situation.
I'm also so glad your pantry is back on its way to being STOCKED! :>)
I hope the manager was sympathetic about the ditso bagging clerk. The clerk probably didn't help you out the door because the manager told him to stay far, far away! I'm glad you got your food and don't need to do that again this week. By the way, I've been known to avoid certain clerks based on my past experiences with them. Just remember this bagger.
Lenetta, that's hysterical.
THanks everybody for your sympathy. It did help to vent and now it seems pretty funny to me.
Holy Cow! That's a, um…heck of a shopping trip! Glad you're feeling better about it now – think it would've taken me longer to get over it! Hope your next one goes more smoothly!
Yikes! I don't know how you managed to keep your cool about it, I might have lost it. Its really gross but meat departments will dropping stuff, re-wrapping it (sometimes) and putting it back out in the case, the excuse being that if they tossed everything they dropped, they would have nothing to sell. Ewww!
I hate shopping. It is one of the things in life that stresses me out…but thank God I don’t usually have trips as bad as yours was that day. As for the meat being put back in the cooler….for me it needs to be secret. I had to stop watching things like Primetime Live because it got to where I had a hard time eating anything. And I found out that I cannot sit in a restaurant where you can see food being prepared. While I know it goes on behind closed doors, when I see a cook handle a piece of raw meat…then with the same UNWASHED hands…put bread in a toaster…I have to leave. Yuck. 🙁
I totally sympathize about the nagger ordeal. While I haven’t had an issue with meat, they have smushed other items and also put ALL the heavy items in the SAME bag. I just don’t get it. And they are usually guys. Guys generally don’t notice detail things like that. I know it almost sounds archaic, but bagging groceries really should be done mostly by women just because they usually pay more attention to that kind of thing. I already don’t like grocery shopping. I really don’t like having to watch over the person getting paid to bag my groceries. I just wish our grocery store had self-checkout.
*bagger* sorry. Typing this on my iPad and I forgot to read over the comment before submitting. 🙁
Today my bagger put my fresh veggies and tofu in with my chicken! Gross! Plus he put all of my groceries (three lbs chicken, tofu, salad, carrots, canned veggies, cheese, yoghurt) in two extremely heavy bags. He didn’t even double sack them. I used to cashier at Walmart and we bagged everything ourselves. I just don’t get how you can do such a terrible job when that is LITERALLY YOUR ONLY JOB! Oh well….Everything is fine and I cleaned my veggies extra well. It’s just one of those shopping trips lol
The best is when they throw all of your bananas, avocados, whatever is easily MASHED on the bottom. I had a bagger bust a tofu pack and he just put it in a plastic bag and handed it to me. Thanks.
Yep smash everything and break open the packages of food. I swear they are trained to be horrible lmao
I can’t believe this is the post that I read when I JUST got back from the grocery store and needed to sit down and rest. As I tried to pay for my groceries with my credit card, it got rejected, tried another, it got rejected. I was wondering what was going on but decided to just write a check to get out of there. The machine kept spitting my check out as well. It turns out that ALL of the registers went down and they could only accept cash. (Should have switched to those cash envelopes like you were talking about . . . ) So I had to use the ATM (and pay the charge since it wasn’t my bank) and get cash out to buy my groceries. Thought about just leaving them, but there were special deals today, and I needed what I bought for dinner.
Oh what a nightmare!!!! How is it possible to only accept cash these days?? I’d guess a lot of people had to leave their stuff!
I have learned to avoid males doing the sacking. I have had similar situations. I had an idiot that put a very large sack of frozen vegetables on top of a sack of fresh lettuce. Another one squashed my marshmallows with canned goods. I’ve had cashiers that dropped frozen dinners on the floor, just being clumsy. Those shopping trips can be very difficult, especially with a little three year old.
i work at a grocery store. (although it’s been years since i worked the registers). however, whenever i go shopping, i always bag my own groceries. and i agree with all other commentors who say that the young men are worse at bagging. it’s stereotypical, but unfortunately true. That being said, I often find that ladies don’t put *enough* in one bag. I use reusable sacks, but occasionally get plastic to line wastebaskets or scoop dog poop. but I don’t need 100 bags for a grocery order that could fit in 10. Hence why I do my own bagging. and the situation with the meat was completely inexcusable. There were about half a dozen better ways to resolve that situation, and none of them involve you having to go back to the meat case yourself. I know this was years ago, but on behalf of all grocery store employees everywhere who actually care, I am deeply, deeply sorry.
Don’t apologize! I agree that the vast majority of people bagging groceries would never let this happen!