The Grocery Store Incident

Jerry parked the car in the middle of the lot, not in the handicapped spaces but not so far out that getting to the grocery store was a hike. He quickly headed for the automated doors of the entrance; the rain was just spattery enough to be a mess.

Once inside, he made a beeline for the cleansers. Aisle six. He grabbed a bottle of Comet and headed for the checkout lines. It was all he really needed - needed urgently - but he picked up a box of toaster pastries as a single permissible impulse buy.

Once he got to the front, he considered his options briefly but thoroughly. He had few enough items for the express checkout, but there was already a major traffic jam going on over there. He picked a lane right in the middle, with competent looking cashier and bagger and four people in the line itself, all of them without much to buy. Typical for a Saturday, a few lanes were open but already backed up.

The first person in the line was an elderly man with a scarf wrapped around the collar of his raincoat. He was scanned and bagged without any trouble. He paid in cash, which took very little time.

The next person in line was a tall brunette with a colorful jacket and what appeared to be a surgically embedded cell phone. She had her goods scanned then bagged. She paid by card; this took practically no time at all.

The next person in line was an overweight man in dark clothes, complete with a fedora, who began fumbling with a checkbook when his groceries were being scanned. Jerry could feel his fingers curling. Batteries and dog food? You needed to write a check for that? What the hell? Why couldn't you just carry cash? What was so bad about carrying enough cash to buy batteries and dog food? Jerry looked around at the lines to his right and left; both of them had considerably more customers by this time; it wouldn't have paid him to switch. He looked at the guy behind him with an apologetic smile; already that guy was moving toward a different line.

But he needn't have worried. Mister Batteries and Dog Food wrote his check with dispatch, and completed his transaction like a regular trooper.

The next person in line was a middle-aged woman whose hair was bundled under a trashbag-like emergency poncho; she appeared to be wearing sweat-pants and slippers. She was buying cans of beans, a bag of chips, and olive oil. She seemed to be carrying two bottles. Lots of olive oil. Maybe she was making potato chip salad dressing.

"Hey, I got this olive oil earlier and it turns out it's different from this other stuff."

The cashier gamely examined both bottles. She was young and pretty, with the kind of cornfed blondeness one associates with very good cheerleaders. Her virtue as a cashier was undoubtedly her undampanable cheer.

"Yeah, it's extra virgin."

"Well yeah, but the other bottle is on sale."

"Yeah, it's on our preferred discount list."

"I just want to change this one out for that one."

"Ok, do you have your receipt?"

"Yeah, hang on just a minute."

"Ok, if you don't have your receipt we might still be able to take it off your card."

"Here. That's from when I was in here before."

"Ok, this says it was already discounted."

"No, because it wasn't the preferred discount. That was just daily savings."

"Well we have to get that taken off first. But it won't be the same as preferred."

"That's ok. I just want the preferred."

"Ok, let me get that off. You want cash or store credit?"

"Store credit is fine. I'm just getting this virgin."

"Ok, we just have to authorize it."

"Yeah, I'd be ok with cash but you know."

"Well, I guess I can't authorize it from here."

"Well, do I have to go to customer service?"

"No, I just have to get Mark to ok it."

"That'll be fine."

"Yeah, hang on a sec. MAAARK!"

As the cashier yelled and a guy in an apron the same color as the grocery store sign ambled pleasantly towards them, the time in Jerry's world seemed to slow. What had been a two way exchange of transactional pleasantry became a three way exchange of molasses-covered light and sound. Mark walked up to the cashier and conferred for a time. After a consultation, which the customer confirmed was ok, Mark concluded that indeed the bottle of olive oil was extra virgin, and was thus eligible for the preferred discount. After similar deliberation he conjectured that the bottle of olive oil that had been purchased previously was going to have to be refunded, and having confirmed this much as well with the cashier and the customer he began to consider whether the price of this refunded purchase would be remitted in the form of cash, that is to say legal tender, or store credit.

Jerry didn't hear many more details. Time pressed and surged; it seemed to be speeding up now, way way faster than normal. Some guy in the lane to his left bought nearly a hundred dollars worth of various food and pushed his cart out the door, followed by someone buying about thirty dollars worth of fruit suitable for a large fruit plate. After that came someone buying about fifty dollars worth of jelly and various automobile supplies.

In the lane to his right a man bought pet supplies and a watermelon. The man behind him appeared to be in charge of supplying a company of lumberjacks bivouaced just outside the door; his groceries were stacked on his cart to a remarkable height. They seemed to skid over the conveyer belt and hop into the plastic grocery bags practically of their own volition. The man swiped his card and pushed his cart out the doors so fast he seemed to be on a freshly greased track. The automated doors whooshed open and zipped closed with such rapidity as to imply that magic was involved.

The store sound system was providing the song Nights In White Satin as a counterpoint to the great cashier race, but in Jerry's head Prokofiev's Alexander Nevsky was playing. The lady who had been behind him had long since abandoned all hope; a few people had taken her place but had seen the advantages of taking other lanes and finally departed, leaving Jerry alone in a lane with a customer who wanted to get a bottle of olive oil on the preferred discount list, and a cashier and junior manager who most assuredly wanted to sell her one but not badly enough to actually give her the bottle and take her money. Or store credit, depending.

At last, as the lanes to the left and right took on the semblance of twin blurs, Jerry began to understand that this was not a random occurance. This was a mystical phenomenon, perhaps owing to a congruence of planets or stars or bottles of ketchup on Aisle Three. Somewhere, far away in a nonesuch land of mystical wonder, the Screw Jerry fairy had waved her magic wand and made it impossible for him to get out through that lane. A wall of olive oil barred the way, declaring that none would pass.

With this revelation before him, Jerry at last excused himself from that lane and got into a different one. All was well; the cashier was a seasoned professional who had her own bagger, young and energetic and not too snide for comfort, and she knew how to keep him hopping. The benedictory 'have a nice day!' came at rapid yet soothing regularity, and Jerry soon once again found himself with only one customer before him. He glanced back over at the lane he had occupied and noticed that Mark was no longer there, and the cashier was on a different customer, then a different one, then a different one yet.

Jerry tuned into the conversation in front of him.

"...that's what I'm saying, this coupon might not work with the preferred discount."

"Well, which one is more?"

"Hang on a sec. MAAAARK!"

Jerry's body and face became immobile, trapping his mind within the statue of his flesh. Deep inside he screamed, and screamed, and screamed again. People fled from him, from the terrible screaming, their ears bleeding and their faces gaping with howls of unheard anguish. The front window exploded outward from the unimaginable sonic pressures. The shelves shook and crumpled; the very walls began to crack and collapse outward, not just the walls of the store but of the entire city. Roofs peeled away and cars and debris tumbled far beyond the reach of sight. The oceans answered Jerry's screams by clawing at the land with supra tidal vigor, tearing away great chunks of the very continent and consuming the works of nature and man. Titans, freed by the cosmic disorder from their labors of sustaining the laws of existence, arose and shook their fists at the cold sky, their voices joining Jerry's in a chorus of rage and despair. The moon cracked and burst asunder, unleashing a fusilade of Praxis rings into the cosmos. Jerry's screams grew faster and more frantic, each breath threatening to tear out his vocal cords and blast them into the deep beyond. The stars themselves began to tremble with the resonance of his screaming.

Jerry came to himself to find that the customer in front of him was gone and that the cashier had already efficiently swiped his Comet and his toaster pastries. As they were bagged, he handed her a ten dollar bill. As she counted out his change, she said "Sorry about the wait."

Jerry looked into her guilelessly cheerful face and replied, "No problem."

He headed for the door with her "Have a nice day!" ringing in his ears. The rain had stopped. He tottered through the remaining puddles with his bag of groceries clutched limply in his hand. It took him four tries to get the key into the lock of his car. Once he started the engine and the air conditioning, however, his mind traveled to the incipient pleasure of a really nice toaster pastry, and the echoes of his travails in the grocery store receded into the waves of the day.