Tarkblog

I try and buy most of my gifts online. The wife does as well. This makes shopping a much easier process. It’s much worth my time to spend an extra 20-50 dollars in shipping over the course of the holiday season than to try and venture out amongst all the people doing mass-pandemonium shopping.

However, we still have to get a few things locally either due to not finding them in stores or because we need to get this a bit more quickly than can be delivered. My step-dad’s mother, for example, always receives an amaryllis kit from us. She’s grown accustomed to it, so much that she simply expects to get it. We had some trouble finding them this year. The ones we did find were considerably more expensive than we had bought in years past.

We tried a few different places - notably, we decided to try the new CVS that just opened.
On the way there, I was #2 in the stopped line of traffic at a 4-way intersection. When our direction got the turn to go, naturally the turn arrows came on first. I (and the person in front of me) were going straight, so we had to wait a little bit for the turning traffic. Except, the person in front of me decided not to wait. They just went straight through the light anyway, even though traffic was turning right in front of them.

So I moved up to the first position, and when we finally got the green I started to go. Except whoemever was in the oncoming turn lane decided they still wanted to go, so they cut right in front of me to do it. No impact, but frustration from my side sprang forth.

At the CVS, we had no luck on the flower, but the wife had run out of tape to wrap gifts so we grabbed a 3-pack. At the front of the store, there were four cashiers and people forming pseudo-lines since there’s no semblance of a queue for people to stand in.

Anyway, the guy in front of me leaves and I go up and put down the tape. The cashier just kind of looks at me and smiles, and does nothing. So I push the tape a little closer to her. Then she makes the comment: “Oh, he just had to run out to his car to get his CVS card”. I didn’t see what he was buying (she already had it bagged), but it was just one item. I’m thinking “okay, can’t you ring me up in the meantime?”. I mean, if you have to leave the line to go do something, I think you lose your turn. You can jump back in where you were, but they shouldn’t hold the whole procession up just so you can get your frequent shopper card from you car. I call BS on that one.

So there I am at the front of the line frustratingly waiting for this guy to come back. I glance over at the lane next to me. There’s an old lady and her helper (daughter or granddaughter, perhaps) at the line trying to buy a pack of cigarettes. The old lady wasn’t sure what the kind of brand she smoked was, so she brought in a cutout of the front of the pack so the cashier could match it to what they had in stock (some kind of exotic Virginia Slims, in case you were wondering). She then proceeds to write a check for this mega-approximately-3-dollar-purchase. Of course, old people writing checks isn’t the fastest process either. Then I look down the row and notice the other two lanes are full of people writing checks as well. Argh, I hate check writers so much. So I handed the tape to the wife and told her to take care of it, I had to get out of this damn line.

Later that day on the way to some friends’ house, we ran into the same situation again where as soon as the light turned green for straightbound traffic, people in the oncoming turn lane just started going.

I give up. I tried my best, but I simply cannot handle all of the people that come out of the woodwork to shop during the holiday season. It’s too much for me. Next year, I’m spending the whole time between Thanksgiving and Christmas as a recluse.

This entry was posted on Monday, December 18th, 2006 at 7:50 am and is filed under Random Thoughts. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.