
Things like going grocery shopping.
Seriously, I can’t stand that shit. I hate every part of it: The slow shamble down the aisles, one after the other like a Lemming. The creaky shopping carts with one busted wheel defiantly rolling the wrong way. The old lady in front of me at the checkout who decides at the last minute she wants to pay by check, or Japanese Yen, or Moon rocks or some similar shit. The whole ordeal just grates on me.
So, like I said, I don’t shop for myself. I sit home and people shop for me. I highly recommend this.
In fact, if it wasn’t for my cat, I would never set one foot in a supermarket, ever.
You see, unfortunately for me, Friz has drawn the line on buying cat food. She is more than happy to take care of all the grocery-buying for House Slyde, but, as she puts it, “That damn cat is your responsibility. You found him, so you can feed him.”
So, what is a stud like myself, who hates supermarkets, to do?
I’ll tell ya what. Every two months, I go to the supermarket late at night (when its less crowded), and I buy a huge bag of kitty litter, and SIXTY cans of Fancy Feast cat food. Yeah, I said sixty. Then I haul ass to the checkout aisle, pay (in cash!), and high-tail it home, where I don’t have to think about making another supermarket trip for another 2 months.
I’ve been doing this for about 15 years now. EVERY 2 months like clockwork, I make ONE lightning-quick kamikaze run to the supermarket.
For such a quick trip, you might think that I couldn’t POSSIBLY get TOO annoyed by the experience, but you’d be dead fucking wrong.
How could such a seemingly innocuous trip still get my goat?
Well, there’s TWO reasons.
1) Without fail, the ancient old mummy behind the checkout will look at my mountain of cat food on the conveyor belt and inevitably warble out:
“Wow, that’s A LOT of cat food! How many cats do you have?”
Then I feel obligated to explain that no, I only have ONE cat, but I just don’t get to the supermarket too often, yadda yadda yadda. Then two minutes of aimless small talk ensues.
It was cute, oh, the first FOUR HUNDRED FUCKING TIMES it happened, but call me fickle, after that it started to get a tad old. As soon as I hear the old bat say “Wow..”, I just want to reach over the conveyer belt and punch her right in the bifocals before she can continue. One day, I will snap over it. Really.
2) Like I said, I buy 60 identical cans of the same food. That’s a lot of cans. So, to make things easier for the Good-Will-Hunting-Level intellect behind the counter, I stack the cans up into 12 identical stacks of 5 cans each.
12 stacks. 5 cans each stack. The same kind of can.
My third grade Math teacher taught me that I can figure out that the total number of cans is 12 times 5.
Maybe ONCE a year, I’m lucky enough to find an Einstein smart enough to swipe just ONE can, and then press a button on the register to multiply it by 60.
The REST of the year, I am forced to endure old crusty Mildred look at the stacks of cans, then at me, and frown at me like I just made her job harder. Then, she proceeds to take ONE CAN AT A TIME and swipe each one thru that fucking little laser scanner.
Each. Fucking. Can.
Seriously, it’s enough to make me just pop open a can right there and cram that mini-helping of beef giblets and gravy right down her dusty old throat.
A transaction that SHOULD take about 1 minute ends up taking closer to 10. I don’t think I’m asking a lot when I say that I prefer someone who can do elementary school math be my liason between myself and the establishment.
Sometimes it’s enough to make me weep on my short car ride home.
Am I just a hot tempered crazy Sicilian, or does shit like this drive anyone else to murder?