Sunday, October 3, 2010

Patience...it IS a virtue, right?

Yesterday, after the cardio class, I had to stop by the grocery store. Bogey needed cat treats and kitty litter, and I needed some food items. I went to the Food Lion that's close to my apartment, because it was on the way home.

I call this store Ghetto Food Lion. When I say it, my friends know exactly which location I'm talking about. They moved it from it's original location and built a new building, but that did not change a DANG thing. Frequently I go in here and they have like 20 check out lanes, but they'll have 4 cashiers working. What the deuce?

That was the case yesterday. It was around noon. There were several shoppers in the store, and when I went to check out, all the lines were long. And moving slow. O_o

I chose a line and prepared to wait. This would have been a GREAT time to tweet/FB, but of course, I'm on hiatus. So I'm just sort of standing there looking around, noticing my surroundings, and wishing I could tweet my thoughts. :lol:

After a while I notice this line is REALLY taking a long time. WTH is going on? I look up and this older woman is at the front of the line. She has apparently checked out. She has a basket full of bagged groceries, but now she's reaching into the basket and randomly pulling out things and handing them back to the cashier. I thought maybe she overspent, and just needed to take a few things off the bill. But then we (myself and the rest of the folks in line) can see that she's taking out more than a few things. She's pulling out all the produce items and handing them back.

Around me I hear, "this is ridiculous!" and "why is this line so slow?" and "what the heck is this lady doing?" Those were my initial thoughts as well. I've said before, I really don't have as much patience as I used to have. I was thinking, really lady? DID you not know what you could spend when you got here? How do you get a CART LOAD of groceries, get then rung up and bagged, and THEN you realize you can't pay for it all?? My feet were hurting from that cardio class, my legs were hurting, and I was definitely ready to go. Mood: aggravated.

Then, I happened to glance at the woman's face. She didn't look frustrated or angry, she looked sad. So that made me feel sort of bad about being impatient, like maybe she was having some sort of fixed income issue. Which made me think of my dad, because I know he struggles on Medicare and he won't go and get the other benefits he is entitled to.

I don't know why I went from zero to aggravated so quickly. It's not like I had any place to be. Yeah, my feet hurt, but I wasn't dying. It probably wasn't that long a blip in time, if I had actually timed how long we were waiting on her transaction to complete. I felt bad, because when I got up there, it looked like she left the whole cart there, but had pulled out the produce items so they could be put back.

I guess I need to work on some more patience.

2 comments:

Neev said...

Girl, I remember those days as a cashier. And it's sad they have to choose between medicine and food.
Tell Big Bro I said as soon as Dad gets out the hospital make him get his benefits, every little bit helps!

Marilie said...

Girl, we have tried with him on these benefits. I will literally have to take him down there when I got home for Thanksgiving and make him get the foodstamps and whatever else. Medicaid, all of it. He worked from his teenage years through retirement. He needs to get whatever he earned! :)