Oh the lovely check-out lane. The sheer excitement of gambling on which lane will get you to the cashier the quickest. Peeking at peoples carts to see how long it will take them to check out and imagining time spans in your head. A bunch of clothes on multiple hangars? Nope not going in that lane. Heaping piles of multiple snacks and a seat filled with toiletries? Lower rack filled up? Nope not going in that lane either. Oh look! Someone thought another lane would be quicker and switched to the next register’s line. I slide into their spot thinking I lucked out as there were only 2 people now in this lane.
Turns out that doesn’t matter if the cashier is the slowest checker on the planet.
And she was. Not because she was chatty or disabled or anything, but she had this look of confusion on her face. Deep agitation. It led me to believe she wears that expression a lot judging from the crater deep lines between her brows. Every scan confused her. She’d scan an item, purse her lips, furrow her brow and look it up and down through her little spectacles after she scanned it. Then she’d give the same look to the screen. Up and down glance of confusion. And then she’d place it in the bag and repeat. I wanted to ask her “What are you so confused about!?” I thought it at least 72 times during a 5 minute period.
What confused me though was the guy checking out ahead of me. He was a mid thirties Dad wearing adidas pants and toting his 2 boys with him both in full on snow suits. I’d say the kids were 6 and 8. The 8 year old continuously slapped the other one on his head with this pair of gloves and the younger kid let him. So he hit harder and harder. Then he hit him in the face. Over and over. The Dad looked at the older boy a few times and kept saying the same thing “Hey now. You better stop that or else...” It continued, he’d repeat the same phrase and the little boy would repeatedly get his head beat by the gloves. I kept wondering “What is this ‘what else’ you’re speaking of?” What a meaningless noneffective threat! Bad parenting mister. I kept giving the glove slapper the stink eye and he’d give me this sheepish grin back. He even rolled his eyes at me. It pissed me off and you do NOT want to fuck with me when I am hungover. I had to bite my tongue to not yell “Knock it off!”
I finally looked around to see if anyone else was witnessing this episode of naughty behavior and lackadaisical parenting. I finally caught eyes with the guy behind me in line and he looked at me and said one sentence “I’m going to start a reality show called Clueless in America,” and shook his head.
He was pushing 350 and had a lovely beer gut protruding out the bottom of a 2-sizes-too-small sweatshirt. To top it off his fly was down. It’s cold as hell out dude! You didn’t feel the breeze?! Ha! Clueless in America? Yeah good luck with that one.
I turned back around so he wouldn’t see my jaw drop.
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