The Shopping Cart Delivery
One of my favorite activities during the Associated Year was going out on deliveries. For one, it got me out of the store and away from the crazy Yemeni cursing of my boss. For...two...(? Is that even right?)...it shaved off at least a little time from my workday, sort of like an unexpected break, though I was still working. Lastly, it opened up the opportunity to snag some tips.
That last line made me sound like a whore on the hunt for some leper-love.
Anyway, one of the first deliveries I remember having to go on was to a street maybe a half-mile away. I was excited because it was a delivery I would be doing on my own because of its proximity to the store (I wouldn't need someone to drive me there) and I knew that I could take my sweet-ass time coming back (I didn't want the customer to wait for her groceries but I was also in no rush to get back to that hell-hole. This might sound like a suspect-ass work ethic but believe me this place would have sapped the life out of Mother Theresa or the guy that builds all of those buildings out of toothpicks: )
I was also looking forward to getting some additional exercise; I figured that carrying a bunch of groceries at least a half a mile would have been a decent workout. Then I saw the enormous box that the boss had put together (his personal policy was, unless the customer requesting a delivery specified a size and/or brand, he would give them the largest, most expensive item he had. Stay classy Gigantor Senior!) and I wondered how the hell I was going to manage to carry it all the way to the customer's house.
Then I saw it.
The shopping cart.
We're not talking one of those small, collapsible ones that many people take to the supermarket. We're not even talking about one of those pygmy ones you'll find at some stores that really don't warrant having real shopping carts (clearly a basket would do in these fine establishments, but people are lazy and thus the ridiculous smaller carts. Don't mix up the dopey yuppie ones they have at places like Wegmans that are meant to conserve plastic or protect the environment with the ones I'm talking about. These bad boys are just shrunken, stunted, inbred relatives of the normal sized carts.). Hell--we're not even talking about the normal sized ones, either! This was a GIGUNDOUS mammoth cart, big enough to fit the huge box and a class of midget performers from the local clown college.
Okay I have to break off for a second. Seriously--here are two links to two DIFFERENT yuppie conversations I found about the Wegmans carts by Googling "Wegmans carts." I will quote from them both:
Here are some choice quotations from people who actually engaged in these conversations:
(From the first link)
""The only difference between "try" and "triumph" is that extra little 'umph.'" --queenmarsha
(This is the clever quotation signature used by queenmarsha. Really queenmarsha? Are you sure that the only difference between "try" and "'triumph" isn't the subtraction of the letter "y" and the addition of that little extra "i-umph" (sans the dash)? Apparently the only difference between you and not being a complete failure in life is an illimitable gulf.)
"I haven't tried the new carts...well, I did, but I didn't have to buy much when I did. I used the kiddie cart this weekend...I fail to see how the new carts will hold all of my groceries...the bottom part doesn't have tall enough "walls". Also the new carts are a little wider and make them just as difficult to stear as the kiddie carts!" --sw2
(This is a mindfuck of a statement. Let me attempt to get this straight...you fail to see how the new carts will hold all of your groceries, presumably because, "the bottom part doesn't have tall enough 'walls'"? And yet, in your very next sentence, you say that the new carts are, "...a little wider and make them (sic) just as difficult to stear (sic) as the kiddie carts!")
Let's tackle the grocery storage issue first. The bottom part of the cart doesn't have tall enough walls but the cart, overall, is a little wider (despite making it just as difficult to "stear" as the kiddie carts!), correct? So isn't it possible that the reduction in height of the walls is somehow balanced out by the additional width of the cart? I mean...wouldn't you know whether or not the cart would hold all of your groceries if you simply tried it out?
But you didn't try these carts out, correct? I mean, it's the first thing you said: "I haven't tried the new carts." That's as clear-cut a declarative statement as they come. "I haven't tried the new carts." The only way you could have been clearer would have been to cut out the bullshit apostrophe and to have gone with , "I have not tried the new carts." Surely you could have improved upon the sentence by sprucing and tidying it up a bit. Maybe by saying something like, "I have not yet used the new shopping carts." That would have been fine...but your VERY NEXT SENTENCE renders this entire argument moot:
"...well, I did, but I didn't have much to buy when I did."
So you didn't, as noted in your first sentence...but you did, even though you didn't when you did...right? Now, technically, this second attempt at English might be considered part of the first sentence since it is separated by an ellipsis but that would work from a grammatically correct standpoint only if you were attempting to imbue your statement with some degree of suspense (by including the ellipsis at the end and allowing the sentence to trail off) OR if you were quoting someone and were glossing over some words via the ellipsis. The only quotation marks I see are around the word "walls," and they appear with a period outside of them for some strange reason (was the period not cool enough to hang out with the word walls? Was it relegated to standing out on the line for hours on end simply because it wasn't on the list?).
Judging from your masterful use of proper punctuation, my guess is that you did intend to separate the sentences into two unique statements. I conclude as such because of the fact that you use two periods (one of which is placed incorrectly, as noted previously) and three ellipses in your wonderful contribution to the world of messageboard sagacity.
Back to the point: so you used/didn't use the new carts when you didn't/did have many groceries to purchase (you did remember to pay for them, I hope!) and thus you, "...fail to see how the new carts will hold all of [your] groceries" right? To state the obvious: when you did use the new cart (even though you didn't), despite the fact that you didn't have many groceries when you did, the cart was still sufficient for your needs--correct? I mean, though you had fewer groceries, you didn't need to use two new carts to traverse them about the store, right? So then I fail to see how you can fail to see how the new carts will hold all of your groceries when they clearly just did.
What makes me more nervous though is the fact that you used the kiddie cart when you went shopping despite making no indication that you have children (I pray to Vishnu that you have not procreated) AND that you make reference to previous experience with the same style of cart at the end of your statement, declaring them, "...just as difficult to stear (sic) as the kiddie carts!"
I really hope that you have someone who assists you when you go out grocery shopping.
"Are you taling the plastic carts? I've heard from employees that they break easily and are mainly for days when they are really packed and run out of carts. If it's not this cart then our Wegmans doesn't have them. I by the way hate the little carts. You can't even fit your purse in them." --za5ofus
(First of all--what the fuck does "taling" mean? And why, when I Google the word, does a bunch of Thai shit come up? Second of all--you've "heard from employees that they break easily and are mainly for days when they are really packed and run out of carts"? Have you really had conversations with employees about the goddamn shopping carts? I can only imagine the conversations that THEY have had about YOU after such banter, dipshit.
Oh, and avoid the hyperbole next time. Unless your purse is bigger than either of these little carts
http://www.flickr.com/photos/rockinfree/3403260582/
then you're clearly lying...and there is a place held in especially high esteem in Hell for hyperbolic liars, lady.)
"I heard that the new carts are only in Pittsford for now. They're not the plastic carts. They're strange looking cart...the only plus I can see is that you can fit 2 kids to sit at the top, but they need to be small kids. The carts are kind of like the smaller carts they have when you go to just pick up a few things, with a top and bottom tier but the bottom teir extends longer." --sw2
("They're strange looking cart...the only plus I can see is that you can fit 2 kids to sit at the top, but they need to be small kids. The carts are kind of like the smaller carts they have when you go to just pick up a few things, with a top and bottom tier but the bottom teir extends longer." (Emphasis added)
Another Shakespeare-worthy gem from sw2. This is what that very same quotation would look like properly sicced up:
"They're strange looking cart (sic)...(sic)...the only plus I can see is that you can fit 2 kids to sit (sic) at (sic) the top, but they need to be small kids. The carts are kind of like the smaller carts they have when you go to just (sic) pick up a few things, with a top and bottom (sic) tier but the bottom teir (sic) extends longer (sic)."
Fact: I managed to use more sics than sw2 used ellipses just now.)
"Newly designed shopping carts?? I'm intrigued....." Susan...(full name truncated to protect poster's stupidity--whoops--identity)
(You're intrigued by newly designed shopping carts? You might want to cash in that extra question mark and two extra periods for a life, girl!)
(I am going to comment inside of the quotation for sake of ease since this is a Tolstoy-esque length one.
I was just venting about these to my dh the other day! (Seriously? Who the fuck vents about shopping carts?)
First, I have a friend who lives in Virginia (outside of DC), (...because any part of Virginia could be INSIDE of DC? The District of Columbia is a geographically sovereign realm, dope!)
and they got these same new carts a couple of weeks ago. So I think the chain may be rolling them out (no pun intended) (I'm pretty sure you intended it. You probably even did one of those pathetic little self-satisfied chuckles when you re-read it. You might've even contemplated the laughter that your little joke would create. Your little gift to the world, ey cunto?)
to all their stores eventually. She HATES the new ones because she has 3 kids and she says the largest size isn't as big as the old largest carts, and doesn't hold everything she needs when she does a big shopping. (Does a "big shopping?" I feel like my brain just did a "big crapping" reading this.)
You can't pile as much up and there just isn't as much room. She wound up filling one large cart & having to leave it with the manager while she continued her shopping. (Jesus Christ, lady! How many times a year does this woman go shopping? Clearly she must do "little shoppings" at various points, no?)
I find the new large carts are really awkward to push around. I shop at the Pittsford W's and I keep seeing people bumping into one another with them. (I can only imagine what these people must do when they get back into their cars to drive the fruits of their "big shoppings" home.)
Today I was in the checkout line running my credit card through and the woman behind me kept bumping my legs with her cart. She had no idea she was doing it, it's just that the bottom "tier" now extends out farther than the top one and it's easy to not even notice that it's hitting something (or someone!) (SERIOUSLY!? AGAIN with the fucking tiers!?)
The new small carts are about the same as the old smallest size--fine for quick trips, but not for a regular shopping, (COME ON LADY! STOP USING SHOPPING AS A NOUN! IF YOU'RE GOING TO USE THE GERUND FORM OF THE VERB "SHOP" THEN SAY SOMETHING LIKE "but not when I go shopping" OR "but not for a regular shopping TRIP." I am getting dumber by the minute reading this shit.)
I miss the regular-sized, "standard" cart which is what I always used.
About the only positive thing I can say about the new carts is that they push smoothly. And they have a built-in cup holder if that's important to you! :-) (Seriously? A full-faced emoticon?)
Boy, I can't believe I had so much to say about shopping carts! :-) I wonder what Wegmans is doing with all of the old ones? I hope they aren't winding up in landfills!" (Seriously? ANOTHER full-faced emoticon? I can't wait for the day YOU wind up filling a landfill.")
From the second site:
"Love the new small shopping carts. The previous carts were OK but the big ones were too big. The smaller carts were fOK but when the store is very busy almost any cart to too big to maneuver swiftly and easily. I know this will make no friends but the carts with the little cars in front are a pain and neither the child nor most parent could maneuver them effectively. Best part is that they will be clean for at least a little while. People seem to get in a zone when grocery shopping and pay little attention to where they are leaving their cart or who may be coming around a corner." --TOC
(Apparently this woman was too busy to write out the word "okay" and opted for a fully-capitalized version...at least the first time. I'm not sure of what she meant by "fOK" unless she was somehow referencing the function of OK, in which case she would have wanted to write it as f(OK). I'm guessing she wasn't ascribing a mathematical function value, though, since in the previous sentence she said, and I quote,
"...but the big ones were too big," and she then continues to say in the same sentence as fOK (sic) "...but when the store is very busy almost any cart to too big to maneuver swiftly and easily." (emphasis & emboldening added) Somehow the adjective "scholarly" and this woman's name would never be deemed connubial.)
"...but the big ones were too big," and she then continues to say in the same sentence as fOK (sic) "...but when the store is very busy almost any cart to too big to maneuver swiftly and easily." (emphasis & emboldening added) Somehow the adjective "scholarly" and this woman's name would never be deemed connubial.)
"New carts FTW. The small ones rule. I fit a ton of $%# in it." --weaz
(Big dopey dick FTW! Good thing for weaz he (and it's definitely a he--I can't envision a woman referring to shopping carts using FTW) believes that "the small ones rule." At least he's not lacking in the confidence department the way he clearly is in both the intellectual and phallic length ones. Notice how he was attempting either to be polite or a retarded rebel by replacing the word "shit" with a bunch of symbols. Clearly this was his intention as he began the word with a dollar sign--the closest symbol to the letter 's'. Unfortunately for him, though, there are only three symbols there, which means that he misspelled the word shit in symbol form. God I hope his DNA decides to pack its bags and dip one day.)
"+ much easier to navigate through madhouse too." --zxz942#@saq
(Did that last motherfucker seriously use a plus symbol instead of the word??)
"The new carts rock." --NumberSix
(Really? Side-to-side, or front-to-back? Dumbass.)
"i'll be sure to fill out a comment card requesting tethers for childrens arms on the front bar." --Bo-Peep
(At least we left "Retarded-ville" for a return trip to "Yuppie Town")
I love the deconstruction (and destruction!) of random quotations from yuppie messageboards.
Good Lord! I was doing a post about the Shopping Cart Delivery!
Okay...back to the thread. So they pack a good forty or fifty pounds of groceries into this ENORMOUS shopping cart and send me on my way. Now, at first, I wasn't that concerned. In fact, it was quite the opposite: I was relieved not to have to lug all of that crap over to this woman's house.
Oh...how naive of me.
I get the cart out of the store and turn to the right to head up the block towards my next turning point...and I realize that I am pushing an ENORMOUS shopping cart filled with things a fifteen or sixteen year old boy would decidedly not need (one clue: they had wings.) People (including both pedestrians and motorists alike) were staring...but I doubt that it was because of either my appearance or even because of the sheer girth of the shopping cart. No, no...they were likely staring because of the one thing I didn't count on:
The noise.
Aside from the fact that this goddamn thing could have benefited from a thorough thermal soaking in WD-40 (the shrieking creaking sounded like the climactic theme from Hitchcock's original version of "Psycho), it was heavy and made almost entirely of metal. It lacked any sort of shock absorption--or even an actual suspension, for that matter--and thus it was loud. And by loud, I mean LOUD. The combination of the the heaviness of the cart, its lack of suspension, its ricketiness, the goods bouncing around inside, AND the uneven pavement/sedimentary nature of the concrete made for an extremely obnoxious, metallic, shaking/ringing sort of noise as I walked up the street.
The sound was as pervasive as the stink of a dog fart: there was nothing I could do to mitigate it.
I couldn't walk in the street because there was a lot of traffic moving at somewhat high speeds...so I had to suck it up and walk along the sidewalk until I reached the street that would lead me into my neighborhood and towards the woman's house.
Silently, I cursed her as I felt the dozens of pairs of eyes land upon me and the cart. Conversations stopped, children cried, hell, I'm surprised motorists didn't stop to jeer at me along the way. I was mortified. Suddenly, I couldn't wait for this friggin' Odyssey to be over.
Finally, after what feels like eons I finally make it to the street where I can turn and begin to get away from the prying eyes of the general public. Of course, now the issue is that the probability of me bumping into someone that I know is increasing exponentially with each step I take further into my neighborhood...
but I have no choice. I must press ever-forward.
So onward I go, now gleefully walking along the somewhat-smooth asphalt and grinning maliciously at the sidewalk. I'm pretty sure I gave it one of those, "Take THAT!" looks as I walked along the street.
But then I noticed something else. With each block that I traveled away from the main thoroughfare that I had previously been on, the quieter it got around me...which meant that I was making only more cacophony as I walked.
Now, people were looking out of their houses.
Can you imagine what that was like? Seeing people peering through their blinds, trying to get a glimpse of the source of the din disturbing their placid weekend rituals? These poor fucks were trying to relax after a long, difficult week and now they have to listen to my shit-show of a shopping-cart carnival rolling through town.
I tried lifting up the cart but all that did was increase the squeaking on the front wheels. I was petrified of snapping them and then REALLY having an issue.
Finally, I make it to this woman's block...and it's as quiet as a church the day after Christmas or Easter (ouch! Sorry Catholics! You know that I love you! Respect.) Now, since the street itself was smaller than the previous two I had walked along, the sound was not only amplifying but fucking echoing OFF OF THE HOUSES! It was as if it traveled to one side of the street, hit a house, built up strength, and then careened off to the other side of the street, only to bounce back another time!
I finally make it to the house...and what do I see? She lives on the top floor of a two or three family house. It might as well have been Rapunzel's goddamn tower, her door was that high and that far away. Though I might have been strong enough to carry the weight of the groceries, the box was far too cumbersome and flimsy to support their weight; the last thing I needed was to have all of her shit come tumbling out of the box and go rolling down the stairs when I was OSO close to putting this whole experience behind me.
And so I rang the bell to let her know I was there and then began to make the twelve or fifteen trips that it took for me to bring up some of the groceries, place them on the floor on the inside of her apartment near the door, return to the cart, grab more groceries, and rinse, wash, repeat.
I could tell that she disapproved of some of the items I was bringing in (remember--my slick boss gave her the diamond-studded pussywipes instead of the plain vanilla ones. Can you imagine that? Flavored pussy-pads? I hope you just did. Awesome.) because I could see and hear her mumbling to herself something about calling my boss and complaining. The sad part was that I intuited somehow that this had happened before. Clearly she knew that he would do this and evidently she forgot when she was ordering to be more specific. I'm guessing this happened NUMEROUS times.
So I finally get all of the groceries in and she gives me the money and then, with a bit of a wink, she hands me, "a little something extra for you." Three dollars. Now, believe me, I was grateful for the money (it helped me to buy my lunch...you know...from the store where I WORKED?) but that three dollars felt like a slap in the face. To be fair, I think a hundred dollars would have still felt like a slap in the face...but I wouldn't have been so pissed off about it as I was. I was annoyed ESPECIALLY by her confidential wink when she handed it to me, giving me that old, "Don't spend it all in one place!" type of look.
I head back down the stairs, grab my cart, and head back on my way. Dejected, I traveled back up the block making my racket and drawing attention to myself...but I was swimming in a sea of self-loathing and an overall malaise that someone as young as me should not have been experiencing at so tender an age.
Lost in my ennui, I schlepped my world-weary ass back to the store where I found that I had another delivery to go on.
You can bet your ass that I carried those groceries in my arms with a gigantic smile on my face.
It might've accounted for the two dollar tip I earned.
