Regarding People

Grocery Store Chronicles: 3 Vignettes From My Shopping Adventures

/ Ally Bean / 246 Comments

Pretty picture of puzzle pieces put together that has nothing to do with the subject of this post, but pretty picture gotta pretty, right?

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TO BEGIN WITH

Over the years I’ve written about my grocery store shopping experiences and put the stories here under the tag: Grocery Store Chronicles.

[The story about discussing kinds of pears and the story about stealing potato chips have been the most popular. Also there’s Betsy‘s favorite story about me buying beer.]

While the following isn’t one complete story like those I linked to above, these are 3 vignettes about what I watched unfold, and entertained me, while shopping in ye olde Kroger this past holiday season.

LOVE CONQUERS CONFUSION

The layout of the first part of our store goes like this: produce, deli, cheese, bakery, then wine and beer.

It was coming up on New Year’s Eve, busy everywhere in the store.

I’d just seen a couple in their 40s picking out some produce for something specific, while overhearing them talk about making something special to take somewhere.

Moving on I went to the cheese kiosk and found myself standing with about 10 other people there as well as the couple. I looked around and realized that the wife was on the verge of tears because, as she explained for all to hear, she couldn’t remember which kind of cheese she was supposed to buy.

She turned to her husband and said: I dunno, I can’t remember. I’m just a little ball of confusion.

To which he said: You know what I like about that?

Her, sad: No… 

Him, leaning in to hug her: You’re MY little ball of confusion.

She smiled weakly while all of us standing around the cheese kiosk in unison went: Aww…

And with that he kissed her and said: I’ll go get the beer while you figure out the cheese. Meet you back here. 

KARMA GOT HER NUMBER 

It was crowded in the store with people and displays of food/wine everywhere.

Zen-Den and I had a small cart full of items and were heading to the U-Scan lanes to buy our stuff. A woman walking behind us to the U-Scan was impatient with our pace. She did a wild dash around us to get to the U-Scan lanes first, giving us the evil eye as she went by.

We shrugged.

As fate would have it, despite our pace, we ended up in the U-Scan spot beside her, which when she saw us caused her to snarl our way.

We shrugged.

Well, as Z-D played cashier scanning our items, I stood there and watched her, surreptitiously. And here’s what happened: her first credit card was rejected. Her second credit card was rejected.

And when we left having successfully scanned, packed, and paid for our groceries, she was holding a third credit card that had been rejected, while talking on her cell phone with someone.

Half of me felt sorry for her because I’d guess everyone has had a credit card rejected at some point and it is frustrating, BUT considering how impatient she was and her negative attitude toward us… I smiled.

Ha!

WHEN THE WRONG THING IS RIGHT

I was waiting in the cashier line, standing behind a Dad with a cart heaped with groceries and a 3 y.o. sitting in the basket cart seat. The Dad was at the front of the cart while the boy was directly in front of me.

The little guy was laser-focused on everything his Dad was putting on the conveyor belt. Nothing escaped his notice.

About halfway through unloading the cart the boy told his Dad: That’s the wrong milk.

Dad: What?

Boy: It’s blue. 

Dad: WHAT?

Boy: It should be red.

Dad, catching on that his son was talking about the color of the label on the milk: No the blue one is right this time. 

Boy, raising his eyebrow like the 50 y.o. man he’ll be: Mom. buys. red.

Dad, still putting items on the conveyor belt: The blue one is buttermilk. It’s the right one this time because Mom is making cookies and this is what she uses. 

Boy, shaking his head, rolling his eyes, explaining to me under his breath: Mom BUYS cookies… and she’s gonna be mad about no red milk. 

~ • ~

QUESTIONS OF THE DAY

So, been shopping in a brick and mortar store lately? And how did that go for you?

Overheard anything that made you smile?

Or watched something happen that brought out the snark in you?

Or confirmed that kids can be wise beyond their years?

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Think Before You Speak: The One About The Cashier Kid And What Bob Taught Him

/ Ally Bean / 252 Comments

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I WAS SHOPPING IN our local Kroger, standing in line behind a chatty woman who was talking with our cashier, a kid about 18 y.o. He was tall, slim, and personable– plus efficient.

I liked him.

As he goes to hand this chatty woman her bag of groceries an older man who is also tall, slim, and personable, a customer on his way out of the store, shouts over to this cashier kid saying: “how ‘ya doing stupid?”

The customer does a little hand wave and smiles as he walks by.

Our cashier kid smiles, waves back, and says: “okay.”

The older man nods his head, keeps walking, and goes out the door.

I figure this older man is the cashier kid’s grandpa and don’t think anything more about it. They looked enough alike for that to be true.

But I was wrong.

Well, the chatty woman in front of me was NOT PLEASED by this brief conversation. She immediately begins to interrogate this cashier kid: “do you know that man?”

The cashier kid says: “he’s a customer here.”

“And he calls you STUPID?!!”

“Yes, but it’s okay he’s pretty nice, really.”  

The cashier kid starts to look frazzled, clearly not into this conversation, but the chatty woman won’t let it go, she NEEDS to know more so she presses this cashier kid: “You mean he’s a customer who talks to you like that and you’re alright with it? Did you tell your manager what he said? You don’t have to take verbal abuse.”

There’s a long awkward pause.

At this point I realize that the cashier kid is in over his head. This previously pleasant conversation with the chatty woman has taken a weird turn that has him tongue-tied, so I butt in and ask the obvious question saying: “WHY does that man call you stupid?”

~ • ~

And with that THE STORY came out. A good one, totally understandable, one that just goes to show that a little bit of humor goes a long way toward making someone else feel comfortable in a trying situation.

~ • ~

COME TO FIND OUT on the first day the cashier kid worked a register by himself he made a major mistake while ringing up this older man’s groceries. Instead of ringing up a $2.50 half loaf of bread, the cashier kid goofed, ringing it up for close to $30.00.

How did this happen, you might be wondering?

Well for some reason our cashier kid got flustered when he saw a half loaf of bread. His mom buys whole loaves, so this was new to him.

He thought it was a speciality item from the bakery and figured he had to do something manually, like you do when there’s a preordered sheet cake. So he input the code for sheet cake, weighed the bread like it was fresh produce [another thing he shouldn’t have done], and ended up with an expensive half loaf of bread.

He immediately realized he’d done something VERY WRONG so he called to the front end manager to come over to help, then as a way of explanation about what was going on he told this older man that: “I’m stupid.”

To which this older man, the customer, replied: “I’m Bob. Glad to meet ‘ya, Stupid.” 

Dad humor, obviously.

But the kind of humor that according to this cashier kid made him smile. In fact it was just what he needed to hear, realizing that Bob wasn’t upset, wasn’t going to yell at him. That everything was going to work out okay eventually.

And that’s how the cashier kid met Bob, the aforementioned waving customer in the first part of this story, who paid that day without any complaint about what happened. But on his way out Bob leaned over to tell this cashier kid that THE LESSON from this was to never tell anyone that you’re stupid.

Why?

Because they might remember something negative you say about yourself and use it against you in the future.

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A Crack In Everything: Talking With A Friend About Aging Gracefully + Announcing A Change To My Blog Schedule

/ Ally Bean / 251 Comments

A WHILE BACK I WAS TALKING with a Friend about a decision she needed to make. Not a huge one, but a smaller annoying one that comes down to deciding who she is comfortable being now.

Friend, much to her consternation, has to alter her way of thinking about something.

While the details of Friend’s decision are specific to her particular situation, there’s a bigger picture to contemplate, especially as you get older.  And a little bit cracked by life.

As we all do.

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HERE’S THE DEALIO: Friend is in her early 50s and has been running almost every day since she starred on her high school cross country team. As an adult she runs marathons, not ultramarathons or half marathons, but MARATHONS.

She’s very clear on this point.

Friend is known for, and is externally validated by, running marathons. She proudly & consistently defines herself as a marathoner, and up until this last year she’s ALWAYS been the fastest, or second fastest, in her age group.  She has ruled in every marathon she’s ever run, until now.

This does not please her.

Friend knows she’s getting slower, the numbers prove it, but she still wants to keep running because she likes to run. However from her point of view there’s a decision to be made, one that is more ego-based than anything else.

Should she:

A) Continue to run in marathons like she has her entire life while reluctantly accepting that there’s a good chance she’ll not be the best in her age group anymore which makes her sad?

OR

B) Start to run in half marathons, something she considers second-class to a *real* marathon, but wherein she believes she’d be the fastest in her age group which makes her happy?

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I’LL TELL YOU FRIEND’S DECISION in the comments below so that you, my little sparks of joy, can take a few seconds to contemplate how you’d handle a situation that involves your ego struggling with itself to gracefully accept the fact that you’re aging.

That is, are you more inclined to lean into doing the same thing as always, but in what you’d describe as a less successful way? Or are you more inclined to do something new that you consider inferior, but do it in a brilliant way?

To put this quandary in a more chit-chatty pithy way: do you keep on keeping on [focus on perseverance] OR do you accept that life’s tough and get a helmet [focus on modification]?

• • ☀️ • •

PLEASE NOTE:

In order to allow more light to get into my life, The Spectacled Bean will be on SPRING/SUMMER HOURS until further notice.

I shall forget my perfect weekly offerings and instead post every couple of weeks, reply to comments here, and check-in with you on your blogs every so often.

Take it easy, everyone. Ring those bells!

Do good. Play nice. Be happy.

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In Which I Admit To Joyfully Thwarting Some Youthful Shenanigans + Reader Comments

/ Ally Bean / 200 Comments

 Joyfully Thwarting Youthful Shenanigans

Remember Muttley, Dick Dastardly’s sidekick?

It’s good to be an adult.

[Bwha-ha-ha!]

A few weeks ago we had an unusually warm day. The temps were in the 70s and it was dry and sunny outside. Around 4:00 p.m. I went into the living room to read.

Before I plopped down on the loveseat I decided to open the window just a little bit, about 2″, to take advantage of the pleasant fresh air. As I began to read I heard rustling sounds outside the window. That’s not unusual when you live on a wooded lot, so I didn’t think much about it.

It wasn’t until I heard voices that I became interested in what was happening outside the window.

“So you gonna do it?”

[Do what, thought I?]

I got up from the loveseat and walked over to look out the window.  Immediately below me were two neighbor boys, about 10 years old, who were scrunched down hiding in our bushes while having a serious conversation about what one was going to do.

“Maybe.”

The gist of their conversation, that I could clearly overhear through the open window, was that one boy had challenged the other to run up onto our stoop, ring the doorbell, then run back into the bushes to hide.

A classic prank, no?

They figured, correctly, that from their vantage point crouched down in our bushes they’d be able to see whoever opened the door and watch that person look confused.

IT WAS GOING TO BE HILARIOUS.

They just knew it.

So I waited patiently at the window. Eventually one kid found the gumption he needed to be a prankster. He ran up onto the stoop, rang the bell, then darted into the bushes.

THERE WAS SNICKERING.

Lots of it.

I did nothing except stand quietly at the window looking down on the youth below, waiting to see what they were going to do when no one came to the door.

[Truth bomb, I may have been smiling a bit too much.]

As you can imagine when no one came to the door these two boys were defeated. Their classical prank had failed. Their shoulders sagged, they stood up in the bushes, and muttered. Then the one who’d rang the bell stepped out of the bushes and started to walk across our lawn to his house.

“Dude not that way they’ll see ‘ya.”

To which the first one looked exasperated as he shouted back to his friend still in the bushes, “THEY’RE NOT HOME, haven’t you been paying attention?”

“Oh yah…”

And with that the boys walked slowly across our yard in plain sight, looking dejected, in a way that only failed pranksters can look.

And me, what did I do? I started laughing and am still smiling when I think about how I thwarted this prank. There are moments when being an adult is SO FUN!

Then, of course, who could forget Huckleberry Hound?

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AND FINALLY FOUR READER COMMENTS…

About your take on the word Matriarch:

“I am the matriarch in my family, now that my mom is gone…and I don’t have a problem with that word. Or crone or even sea hag. So long as it is said to me with love, respect and good humour. No one laughs harder at me than myself 😂.”

~ Deb

“Call me any name you want to as long as I think ‘the shoe fits’…. ‘Elderly’ is a tough one, though. Some day, many years down the road, I may earn that particular stripe but only because of the eighty or ninety wonderful years leading up to it.”

~ Dave

“Matriarch is a word that means she is the head of her tribe, in my case, that would be my mother. My turn will come. Interpretation is a funny thing. Words are used in various ways and transform over the years, their original meaning becoming muddled.”

~ Dale

“Wow. I grew up in a matriarchal family so I see it as a compliment! Isn’t it funny how we all have our own perceptions based on our experience? Sea hag would raise my hackles!”

~ Kay