...And We're Back

I’m so impressed with my new Swiffer in Elk Grove that I had to buy another one for my LA house. Anything that makes cleaning easier becomes my mission in life to own. And why own one when you can own two?

I wanted a drug store and a grocery store next to each other so I’d only have to park once in this SoCal city that has few free parking spaces so I did the Trader Joe’s/Longs combo errand run.


I guess it was this girl’s first day, although she was so stupid (for lack of a better term) it could have been her fifth for all I knew. She had a coworker standing over her shoulder telling her what to do. Step by painfully slow step. This girl would complete an assigned task and then stare at you and smile as if it was your turn to do something.

Coworker: “Now press Cash… Give him two dollars and thirty cents change…”.
Stupid Girl: (Grabs an inordinate number of nickels from cash drawer.)
Coworker: “Actually, you can use a quarter and just one nickel” (assists her with this, by taking money from drawer and hands to customer in front of me)
Stupid Girl: (smiles and stares at customer)
Customer Before Me: “Uh, can I have my bag?”
Coworker: “Hand him the bag.”
Stupid Girl: (Hands customer bag.)

Coworker: “Hi, how are you?”
Me: “Fine, thanks. And you?”
Stupid Girl: rings up items and stares and smiles at me.
Coworker: “Press TOTAL”
Stupid girl: (stares at register)
Coworker: (presses TOTAL and tells me the total amount)
Stupid Girl: (smiles and stares at me)
Me: “I ran my credit card through.”
Stupid girl: (stares at register)
Coworker: “Press CREDIT”
Stupid Girl: (stares at register)
Coworker: (presses CREDIT button)

It goes on like that and I walk out of that store calculating how long do I need to wait before returning to this store for her to be trained enough not to piss my impatient ass off. Then I decide she may be stupid but it was almost charming. She had an enthusiastic smile and wide doe eyes. You couldn’t hate her. So then I think, maybe I should come back on a weekly basis just to watch her progress because I was fascinated by how ridiculously stupid she was and how did she pass the interview? Did she just smile and stare at the manager with those pleading eyes? And her trainer was treating her with kid gloves so as not to accidentally crack the poor thing. As if every moronic move she made was perfectly normal for someone on her first day.

After cruising through Trader Joe’s aisles and losing my shopping cart by grabbing someone else’s by mistake and shopping with it for awhile and finally discovering what happened and trying to figure out who had stolen my cart and searching for it and eventually finding it where I’d probably left it and wondering why no one had accosted me for stealing their cart and feeling like an idiot, I get in a checkout line. About ten seconds later, some old man sidles up to me from the next line over with his cart. He’s standing right next to me with his cart right next to mine and I don’t know his intentions. Do I say something? His cart has a gallon of milk and a cane. The line he left only has one customer. Then this old man speaks to me in some slightly foreign accent, maybe German. He says something about how he didn’t want to be in that line and could I let him in front of me since he only has one item. I ask him if the line he just vacated had closed or something, otherwise, it’s faster for him to be in the other line. He says something about how he didn’t like that line. I offer to trade him lines if that’s the way he feels about it. He says he has his favorite checkers. He especially likes two of the women that work here but he doesn’t see them. I’m confused, because our line does not contain one of his favorite checkers. So I tell him to go ahead and while I’m debating going to the other empty line, it promptly fills up with other customers. Then the old guy tells me he has walked here over the bridge and he hopes he can make it back. Things are starting to dawn on me and for some reason I feel duped. First he sidles up to me, now I sense he has a plan and for some reason it irks me. I’m in no mood to be irked today. I’m still recovering from losing my cart and Stupid Girl next door, after all.

He asks me if I’m going home in that direction, over the bridge, over the freeway. I’m not even sure where he’s referring, but he points and I say, no, I’m going in the other direction. I’m in this weird guilty quandary, but since I can’t figure out where he is talking about, I imagine winding up taking this old stranger in my car somewhere with his giving me vague directions for half an hour while he tries to remember where he lives just because he’s desperate and lonely or something. It’s a terribly selfish dilemma; I didn’t think he’d murder me, I’m envisioning my frozen food thawing while we cruise all over Culver City. I’m not in an adventurous mood, and as much as I’d like something to blog about, dead men tell no tales, ya know?

I wish that checker would hurry up and finish bagging the customer ahead of me. I just want this to be over already. Then the old man says something like “It’s hard to walk when every step you take feels like you’re walking on knives.” Oh, Christ! Even the Stupid Girl would have said the obvious by then. But I have this weird principle about when people are trying to get a particular response out of me, I refuse to enable them. But jeez, this is a feeble old man we’re talking about here. But what’s going through my mind? I’m thinking, hey old man, if you’ve got knives jabbing your soles, why did you walk over here in the first place? I don’t have to take you home if I don’t want to! What if the cane is just a ruse? What if you get your rocks off shlepping from grocery store to grocery store taking advantage of younger women? But mostly I’m just being selfish.

He tells me to go ahead of him. And it’s almost pitifully generous of me to tell him, no, you go ahead. Oh yeah, what a giver I am. It makes me feel worse to offer that but not add a free ride to the deal. He says, no, it won’t take that much longer anyway. So I go.

While the checker is taking too long to bag my things, the old man sidles up to me again ( I already hate it when the next customer prematurely tries to take over that little tabletop where you sign your checks or whatever - that’s the current customer’s space, not the next up customer’s space, but now it’s someone who I’ve already deemed icky or something and just want to escape). He says something like, “I’m sure I’ll find someone to help me.”

At this point I felt like it would be ridiculous to offer him a ride because then I would be admitting that I knew all along that’s what he wanted and I’d feel like a shit and I’d have to be in his presence for an unknown amount of time feeling like a shit the whole time driving up and down the streets worrying about my perishables. Whereas, if I hurried up and got out of there, I could feel guilty all by myself and never see him again. So I said, “Yes, I’m sure you will.” Then I hurried up and got out of there.

The whole way home, I kept trying to think of ways to justify my actions (or lack thereof). Some of you will lie to me and say, “I don’t blame you, you shouldn’t just allow strange men into your car in Los Angeles. You did the right thing.” And others will say, “You cold and heartless bitch. He’s just a weary old man who needed help and you cruelly abandoned him in his time of need. Remind me never to ask you for anything!” To those of you who who have set up tents in the latter camp, screw you, I feel bad enough about it already.