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November 25, 2009

STEPHANIE SALTER: When do all these ticked off people with carts get thankful?

By Stephanie Salter

TERRE HAUTE — Standing in line at one of the few open checkouts, my arms aching from carrying too many groceries in a reusable shopping bag, I looked around and thought about trying to explain the scene to a curious extraterrestrial visitor.

“Why does everyone look so unhappy?” the ET would ask, being well-educated in English as well as human facial expressions and body language.

“This is a chain supermarket, a couple of nights before Thanksgiving,” I would answer. “No one is ever happy in these places at such a time.”

“What’s ‘Thanksgiving’?” the ET would ask, having missed the course in U.S. holiday traditions.

I would resist the temptation to say, “Thanksgiving is the day before America’s most significant ritual observance of consumerism.”

Instead, I would say, “Well, it didn’t start out this way, but Thanksgiving is about gathering many people — often related, but not necessarily — at one person’s house for a single day of power cooking, overeating, watching sports on television, attempting to avoid political arguments, then power cleaning by the same people who did the power cooking.”

The ET would survey the store, crawling with tired, stressed-out people, pushing over-filled carts a few inches at a time in slow-mo checkout lines. The woman behind us would ask aloud to no one in particular (as she did the other night while I entertained my ET fantasy), “Why do they do this to us, at the holidays? They know we’ll all be coming to the store.”

The ET would whisper, “Who is ‘they’? What is ‘this’ they do to you at the holidays?”

I would explain that “they” are an omnipresent and all-powerful group of people who, primarily, conspire 24/7 to make the lives of ordinary Americans miserable. Once in a while, though, “they” are simply the source of advice or information, as in, “You know, they say there’s no such thing as a maintenance-free deck.”

In this pre-Thanksgiving grocery crush, I would tell the ET, “they” are the managers of the store or — for people who think big-picture — the executives of the supermarket chain who live hundreds of miles away.

The “this” they do to us at the holidays is open too few checkout lines despite knowing that everyone and his dog will be shopping for food.

I would then explain that the local managers really shouldn’t be blamed because they have only so many employees to assign to cash registers, and most U.S. businesses these days act as though it’s illegal to employ more than a skeleton crew.

“But the managers get a ration of you-know-what anyway because they’re here,” I would add. “The poor checkout people get an even bigger ration.”

The ET would notice how stressed-out the checkers looked, especially as stressed-out customers became increasingly angry and frustrated from swiping and re-swiping their debit or credit cards through little plastic readers while trying to keep an eye on stressed-out baggers who might forget to put the bread and grapes on top.

The ET would hear another person in line grumble, “For God’s sake, why don’t they have a separate line for people who don’t know how to use ATMs?” Then we would hear all over the store, “Paul, Kathy, Megan, Josh. Come to checkout, please,” and the ET would point its index finger at the speaker plate in the ceiling and say, “They.” (ETs are quick learners.)

When the new checkers flipped the little lights on above their registers, the ET and I would watch as all the people at the ends of the lines — those standing for the least amount of time — rushed to the newly opened checkouts and whizzed through. This would raise the hostility level of everyone else still stuck in line, including me, who would mumble about how “they” need a “better system.”

At last, at the rear end of the checkout conveyor, I would distinguish my grocery territory from the territory ahead of me with a rectangular plastic bar, and I would begin to unload my reusable bag. The ET would watch me thrust a handful of keys at the checker so she could swipe my preferred customer card before dragging each item over the bar code reader or pausing to yell to another checker, “What’s the code for cilantro?”

The ET would be transfixed as I then swiped my debit card and obediently punched buttons to answer every question the little plastic reader asked — “Cash back? $20? $40? Other? Yes? No?” — right up to “O.K. Amount?”

Then, the ET would hear me cry, “Oh, no! I have my own bag. I’m sorry, I was busy —” and the stressed-out checker would glare while the stressed-out (but quick) bagger would pull all my groceries from the earth-polluting plastic bags I try not to use, and transfer each item back into my reusable shopping bag.

The ET would turn again when this slowdown would inspire the woman behind me to sigh in renewed exasperation and heave an entire case of soda pop onto the conveyor belt with a 25-pound frozen turkey and two 64-ounce cans of yams that had better ring up on sale or else she just might lose it right here and now.

Finally, checked out and walking toward my car — parked about 50 yards away in a teeming lot that resembled a driver’s education video of don’ts — the ET would speak. Looking back at the store, it would say, “The eating and avoiding arguments and power cleaning must be very nice.”



Stephanie Salter can be reached at (812) 231-4229 or stephanie.salter@tribstar.com.

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