I Have This Move
When I’m in a group and someone in the group asks if anyone’s seen movie “X”.
If I haven’t seen movie “X” I will immediately attempt to distract the conversation with some form of an observational question of one of the group’s members. It comes off as a side conversation, but the group tends to join in and it doesn’t look rude because it seems like I’m asking because I’m interested in something of someone’s.
But in actuality, I’m only doing so because 10 out of every 9 people (yes) thinks “No, I haven’t seen that movie!” actually means, “No, but tell me every funniest joke/scariest moment/biggest surprise/the entire ending of the movie!”
And I fuuuuuucking despise spoilers of any sort when I intend to watch a movie, tv episode, or read a book.
So my conversational trickery is warranted.
The Grocery Story of My Life
I have pet peeves, like anyone else. Grocery stores tend to bring out the worst of mine. I think it’s mostly because it’s the mecca of food. So, obviously, you become hungry while walking the aisles and salivating over all that we could devour. And as we all know, nothing creates crankiness like hunger pains.
These days, many businesses have had to cut corners in order to survive. But I’ve seen grocery stores making these particular cutbacks further back than this recession. This was happening back in “the good ole days.” And normally, I cut businesses some slack – but when it effects customers service, that’s where I take issue.
Your customers should not have to bear the burden – or even notice – your moves. Unless they mean improved experiences.
It doesn’t matter which grocery store I go to anymore, they have twelve lanes, yet only three are actually available at any given time. It’s to the point where I wonder why grocery stores even build any more than three checkout lanes. Hey, I’d love to have a twelve-car garage, but if I’m only going to keep one vehicle, then it makes no sense.
Instead, lines behind the only three lanes snake around into other aisles of the store and anger grows amongst the patrons like something out of “Twelve Angry Men”.
But that isn’t the worst of it. You see, department stores often have this same problem. So I won’t be too hard on the grocery stores here. My biggest complaint comes from grocery stores who position themselves as one who bags your groceries for you, yet don’t schedule enough baggers for the lanes.
You only have three lanes open rather than twelve anyway, and you can’t even find three people to bag on those lanes?
Some grocery stores are bag-your-own stores and some provide that service themselves. I have no problem bagging my own groceries, if I am going to a place that does not purport to bag for me. It’s an understanding that the prices you pay are in part because of the services they don’t provide. Just like, I go to a grocery store that may be a little pricier than other places, because they do provide a bagging service, among other things. And I don’t mind paying a little more, because I know what I do get for that extra.
This is why it’s a pet peeve of mine when those places then don’t have enough baggers. So, what am I getting for my extra money at your location? It sure as hell isn’t customer service. If you don’t instantly jump to the bags, the cashier will usually bag them, still. But if I had a nickel for every time there’s been an awkward stand-off waiting to see if you’ll bag them or not … or worse yet, the angry masses behind you now having to wait, then I’d be writing these rants from a gold-plated desk on a diamond-studded MacBook.
The part that particularly creases me, is when you pick one of the lanes that does have a bagger … you begin unloading your cart behind a person who is currently checking out, only to have it be your turn up finally – and the bagger walks away to help on a different lane.
I swear my life is “The Truman Show” and someone just likes to to see my reaction, because this happens … All. The. Time. I feel equal parts frustration and heartbreak when this happens.
“Really? Really?” I want to exclaim in my best SNL Weekend Update voice.
But I don’t.
Simply, if you’re a grocery store who is supposed to bag groceries, then bag groceries. Or discount me. Otherwise, I have no problem giving Peapod my money and having them just deliver the groceries to my house.
Grocery stores have something of a slippery slope these days, not unlike Blockbuster Video. Blockbuster used to be the king. Nobody saw them going bankrupt and closing. But many Blockbusters would be out of the latest new releases. And people grew tired of waiting. Or got tired of late fees. And then Netflix came along, and people could just order movies from their computer and have them delivered to their home. Like that, people stopped putting up with the checked out movies and late fees and having to drive to see if they even had what they were looking for.
I’m not saying grocery stores are close to this happening. Not this decade. But the seed has been planted in a similar way. It took Blockbuster decades to become extinct. More and more, Peapod and other places will look better and better. Browsing online to see what items they have to offer, and then not having to put up with the lines and unstocked food … but to have a place that tells you what they do have available and even deliver it to your home.
Listen, I’m well aware that there are greater problems in the world. I’m not saying this is something that keeps me up tonight or is going to ruin my life. It’s merely one thing out of many things out there, that corporations are getting wrong.
Customer service can make or break companies. Consumers are willing to put up with a certain amount of dissatisfaction. Until something better comes along and they don’t have to put up with it. And the older we get, the more curmudgeony we become!
My Cast of Characters
I’ve never been a morning person. The alarm clock is scarier than any George Romero movie I’ve ever seen. But the older I get, the better I’m getting at naturally waking up early on the weekends. Don’t get me wrong. During the work week, my body wants to sleep until the afternoon because it knows it can’t. But on Saturday morning, I find myself up and at ‘em sometime within the 7 o’clock hour.
On these days, I like to start slowly over a cup of coffee or two at the nearby coffee shop. And observe the people who come and go, here. I challenge myself to imagine who they are; where they’re come from and going to. Partially from stereotypes. But mostly through the small details that others may look past. The details that only officers or writers would notice.
Like the 40-something man in the cargo khaki pants and long sleeve shirt, with generic tan ball cap pull tightly over his head. He sits at his laptop, catching up on an Excel spreadsheet with more columns than the Parthenon. The khakis and hat look out of place on him. Despite it being his attempt at weekend comfort, he really feels at home in the business suit and tie that he wears the other five days a week. These khakis and hat are stuffier than the tucked in, nothing out of place look he has to keep at the office.
Or the girls who walk in wearing their sweatpants and shirt, with hair pulled up into a pony and not a stitch of makeup. In college, this look was only reserved for the public when they had an 8:45am class. On the weekend, it was saved for a morning on the couch after drinking cheap beer and shots of rail liquor. Now, a few years out of college, they’re gaining comfort in the early stages of what will become a career. This coffee shop stop is their reward for completing a morning class at a nearby fitness center.
Of course the older couple in their late 50s, early 60s is already here. They begin every Saturday over coffee and sandwiches. The husband reads the newspaper and orates his opinions on said-articles to the wife. Sometimes she gives a brief retort. But usually she just enjoys her breakfast and lets his statements speak for themselves. They will leave here to meet up with Ted and Sandy for the afternoon. The husband and Ted worked together for years, where they became close friends. And now both having opted for early retirement, each of the couples spend most Saturday afternoons together where they will inevitably spend most of their time talking about the old shop and their inept foreman.
Then there’s the guy who sits at a table with his laptop. Sipping his mug of the day’s mild blend. Writing about the people that he sees coming and going. While his resume and business cards would never say so, he fancies himself a writer at heart. It’s the thoughts and dialogue that jump into his head and make their way to paper or computer which bring him the same kind of satisfaction that others get from restoring an old junker car to its former glory, building a deck off the back of a home with their bare hands, or just strumming on their acoustic guitar. Every Saturday or Sunday morning, he comes to the coffee shop much in the same way middle-aged men attend the MLB Fantasy Camps during Spring Training. It allows him to be the writer he reads about and still imagines he could be some day.
Don’t Fear the Cougar
I get it. Nobody wants to get older. Every other commercial is about hiding wrinkles, having smoother skin and taking years off your face. Nips, tucks, and Botox used to be something nobody admitted to having done. Now, we’re about a week away from these services being offered in your local grocery store, next to the in-store pharmacy and bank. Some scientists believe that the first person to live to the age of 150 years of age has already been born. There’s an excitement out there for many that serious strides are being made in anti-aging products and technology.
But I don’t like it one bit.
This scares the hell out of me, in fact. Don’t get me wrong. It’s exciting to think that my quarter life crisis may have turned out to only be a one sixth life crisis. But can you image the problems this anti-aging could pose?
You’re sitting at the bar, spending the evening hitting on a cute little brunette. She references Johnny Cash and you think nothing of it, because it’s been trendy to dig Cash again since that biopic came out. Things go well, so finally, she takes you back to her place. And that’s when you realize it.
Her apartment smells like moth balls.
She keeps a glass bowl of Werthers on the coffee table.
And instead of K-Y, she breaks out the Vicks Vapo Rub.
The brunette hottie who looks 23, is actually 84 years old. The horror! No longer do you have to fend off cougars, but if all of this anti-aging continues, you’ll have to deal with the saber tooth crowd as well. I don’t know. If you ask me, it sounds rather terrifying to think of everybody looking essentially the same age. Do I want to look like Grandpa from the original “Texas Chainsaw Massacre” when I get older? Hell to the no. But on the flip side, your 92-year-old Grandpa shouldn’t look like The Situation from “Jersey Shore” either.
Which reminds me – Paul McCartney. Please stop with the hair dye. The jowls don’t go too well with dark brown hair. Just be the cute Beatle grandpa, ‘kay?
Channel S(m)urfing Observations
I wake up at 5:30 every morning for work, so when the weekend rolls around, I like to get a slow start to my Saturday and/or Sunday whenever possible. A couple weeks ago, this meant waking up and proceeding to channel surf through channels I never usually watch. And that’s when I found it. A lost show from my youth.
The Smurfs.
And I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. When you go back and watch shows from your ill-spent youth, seeing them through your adult eyes … the shows suddenly have all sorts of things going on that you never saw before. For one, Smurfette. The only female adult Smurf in the entire town. What’s up with that?! You know what that means, right? Her profession?
Obviously the town hooker. The fake long blonde hair. The high heels. The scampering all about town. Smurfette’s hooking for a living. And I can’t believe I never noticed this as a kid. With only one woman in the entire town, I guess we know why the smurfs are blue. Or should we say, their … uh … smurfs, are blue. Oh yeah. I went there. Come on. You were already thinking it. I just stated the obvious.
So then there’s Papa Smurf. Hello. Papa Smurf’s a friggin’ pot head. Look at the stoner beard on him! And is that weed that he’s smuggling right there to the left?
Anyway, everytime you see him, he’s in that laboratory of his, experimenting with all sorts of chemicals and whatnot. Papa Smurf’s obviously the town drug dealer. There’s no other reason for all the town’s young Smurfs to constantly be stopping by and hanging out with the old timer.
Seriously. Look at their Smurf houses. They’re made from mushrooms. Hello! Houses made from shrooms?!
Speaking of Papa Smurf, that leads me to one other thought. Are the Smurfs bald? Papa Smurf is the only smurf with any facial hair. And you’ve got Smurfette’s stripper wig/weave. But you never see any of those Smurfs without their hats on. I would be willing to bet that they’re all bald. Or just country music fans. One or the other. Because country music fans love to wear their hats all the time, too.
But the observations didn’t end there. I noticed a Smurf I never had seen before. His name is Vanity. He’s the gay Smurf. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. I never noticed this as a kid. I couldn’t believe the cartoonists were able to get away with their depiction. Sure, they never come out and actually say he’s gay. But Vanity is the most overly flamboyant, cliche depiction you could find of a homosexual Smurf. From his pink flower that he wears on his hat all the way to the way they voice him. They struck a 10 on the cliche-o-meter.
Oh, and I think the Smurfs are racist.
Look at those hats I mentioned, earlier. Notice something about them, if you don’t let them fall over to the side? Picture them with a gust of wind blowing at them. That’s right. The Smurfs wear Klan-hats. These supposedly “happy-go-lucky” guys could quite possibly be hate-mongers. I’m just saying. It’s a possibility they’re a bit more sinister than they lead on, to be.
I had no clue they were airing old Smurfs episodes on cable. What a great discovery. Much to my surprise, when that was over, an episode of The Snorks came on. The Snorks, for those not in the know, are basically underwater Smurfs with impaled snorkels coming out of their heads. But I’ll save that discussion for another time. Just do yourself a favor, and give The Smurfs one more viewing as an adult. Suddenly, as you can see above, the show’s much more of an adult’s cartoon than a children’s cartoon.
And you thought Shaggy was the only stoner cartoon character! Please. Papa Smurf’s the Snoop Dogg of daytime dope fiends!
Originally published on 2/28/07
Warming Up To Winter
I almost enjoy a woman more, who is bundled up in winter clothing. Almost.
Their essence is expressed in how they choose to layer. And you’re left to your imagination in order to figure out who is underneath it all. It’s one of the things that gets me through the long, almost unbearable, winter months. The cute hats. The fuzzy mittens. The flowing scarves. And the boots. Oh, the boots. The girl who can turn snow boots into something sexy, is a girl who garners my attention.
Their rosy cheeks are courtesy of the nip in the air, rather than the blush in their purse. Give me the glisten of lip balm to that of lipstick, with a smile frozen — literally — on her face. It’ll make me melt every time.
The girls of summer get all of the calendars. But it’s the winter girls that I find hot.
Originally posted Nov. 25, 2007
Driving Me Crazy.
Growing up, I watched lots of horror movies. The same thing always happened toward the end of these movies. The killer would be lying on the ground, supposedly lifeless at the hands of the sweet-faced heroine. But she was never satisfied with merely killing the slasher. She was always compelled to take a peak under the mask, to see his visage with her own two eyes.
I would groan and shout at the screen. What is wrong with you?! He’s going to jump up and attack you for doing that!
I have become the sweet-faced heroine. Well, I mean, so to speak.
I find myself doing this when I have been wronged by a vehicular villain. The person who has decided to use the middle or left lane as their Five MPH Under So I Conserve Gas lane. The person in a hurry to pull out ahead of me at an intersection and cut me off, but not in a hurry to even keep up with traffic. The person driving with their right blinker on for a mile and swerving just casually enough that you can’t tell if they really do want to turn or they’re just completely inattentive.
When I get stuck behind any of these evildoers, I need to get around them. And when I pull up on the side of them and get ready to drive past, I find myself feeling that same compelling urge that horror movie heroines find themselves faced with.
I must look into the eyes of the person who has wronged me! I need to see who – nay – what is responsible for this act of vengeance perpetrated against me!
And so every time, without fail, as I get around this inattentive driver I turn and gawk at them. Oh I stare. Feeling that somehow, seeing the face of this person will miraculously answer all of my “Why? Why me?” questions and give me closure to the duress they caused me.
Unfortunately, like a bad horror movie, these bad drivers keep coming back for more and they continue to haunt me.
I *Will* Judge You
Make no mistake, I will judge you if:
- you are still turning on your Christmas lights
- you even smirk at a single frame of the tv spots for Tooth Fairy
- you have the last name Reinhold.
Now & Then
Nowadays, if you talk to a high schooler about Shop class, do they just assume you’re talking about Photoshop?
Trick question.
It doesn’t matter. Chris Hansen approaches you and asks you to take a seat, regardless. What are you doing talking to a high schooler?
Thanks a Latte!
What is it about coffee shops and grocery stores that always makes me feel like I’m five minutes away from falling in love?
Knee jerk reaction is that it’s too many movies. But I don’t feel like I’m about to save a building full of drunk businessmen and women from an angry German terrorist every time I walk into a skyscraper. So I can’t blame the movies for this, either.
Yet every time I stand in line, waiting to order my Grande Hazelnut Cappuccino or for the Barrista to make it, there’s a part of me that just expects that this is that moment that me and one of the girls sitting in the corner reading her book on Plato or the one trying to decide between the soup-bowl-sized coffee mug purchase or the “Best of Ray Charles” cd to go with her non-fat latte order, will look back on years later as the seemingly mundane and ordinary activity that sparked a three-years and counting romance.
I tried ordering that entire run-on sentence as a coffee once, but the Barista merely looked up and said, “Wait, was that with Skim or 2%? You lost me at Grande.” I realized this was not that moment.
Grocery stores are no different.
I can’t turn a corner of an aisle without sensing another cart about to do the same, crashing into mine. Then we share a laugh, and an awkward pause as I spot a scary amount of cat food in her cart and she spies a jumbo size of toilet paper in mine … only for each of us to jump in at the same time, trying to explain that I have coupons which is the only reason I’d need to buy a chili-cookoff amount of this stuff and she claims she isn’t a crazy cat lady, but that this is the only flavor her one cat will eat so she’s stocking up before they run out. We laugh, when we realize we’re nervously talking over one another. I tell her it’s okay. I have a cat too. So we set up a play date “for our cats”. And four years later, we still get to tell new people the story about how cat food and toilet paper brought us together.
Now there’s always the feeling that a zombie plague is about to hit, too, when I’m at grocery stores. Don’t get me wrong. But that feeling doesn’t carry over to the coffee shops.
I don’t know. Maybe it’s intuition, and something’s bound to happen at one of these locations. Maybe it’s just the subliminal messaging like something out of They Live. Who knows?
For all I know, I’m meant to fall in love at the lobby-level coffee terrace within a skyscraper, right before having to rescue everyone from a German terrorist, while in my tank top and bare feet. There’s always that.
This is my blog. There are many like it, but this one is mine. My blog is my best friend.
