FYI: Ski goggles are not a fashion statement.

Man I suck at life. It's halfway into March and I've posted nothing.... argh.

Grocery shopping is a great cultural experience. It shows you a lot about a place, everything from clientele to employees to selection, it all has a Deeper Meaning. Take the employees for example. In the US, they are super overly friendly, and desperately want to help you find everything. I almost feel like the Safeway employees should go for a career change and switch to counseling, because I have never had so many people ask me "can I help you?" in my life. Or else I am due for therapy. Anyways, the American freakish helpfulness is counteracted by the famous German Indifference, which basically consists of pretending customers don't exist, making snide comments to those who are too slow in throwing their purchases into their cart to be bagged later, and a basic general commitment to being Serious About Everything And On Top Of That Having No Humor. I can't say too much about Spanish supermarkets because I was only in one about twice, but I did stand behind a lady who had to fill out her address and complete medical history and multi-volume memoires (in triplicate) in order to leave her cart for a few minutes. But I mentioned that before. The Swiss are nice and helpful if you need something, but not irritatingly friendly nor with some kind of strange superiority complex.

I'm a Migros, I have to admit. I always go to the same one, 'cause it's the only one which carries my brand of Müsli. Regardless of the fact that I only buy Müsli about every second or third week. Anyways, back when I had nothing to do I could go shopping whenever I wanted, which was mostly mid-morning. Now, the following is a shameless bout of mockery which, while evoking a small but prescient complaint from my conscience that I am Not A Good Person For Making Fun Of Other People--but I can't resist. It's a post about supermarkets and Migros. At my Migros, there's a lady who works there all the time. She has her hair, frizzled and dyed black, always in a ponytail on the very top of her head. Besides this heinous fashion misdeed, she also has no eyebrows whatsoever. Now I suppose it's your choice to pluck your eyebrows out and re-create them with a sharpie if you so desire, but if you do, make sure they actually have the proportions of eyebrows and not of ski goggles.

Aaaaaanyways, I was there today (everything is fricking closed on Sunday, which means everyone goes shopping on Saturday, which means everyone tries to fit a week's worth of groceries in our solitary fridge--shared among 8 people with mutually exclusive food--which is subsequently adorned with little notes as people discover, with dismay, someone else's 3 dozen eggs taking up their shelf). And I collected my usual round of suspects and picked a short-ish looking queue. Of course, I only notice the problem once I have unpacked my basket, and it's too late to leave. The woman in front of me bought about 100 CHF of groceries, but here she is, complaining that she was charged 10 centimes too much for four of the fifteen bars of chocolate she had purchased; apparently, she had mistakenly been lead to believe that there is some kind of rebate or customer loyalty points collection which she would not be acquiring as a result of the store's negligence in proper signage. Establishing that the thing was poorly signed involved three employees and two trips back to the chocolate aisle, whereupon the collective brainpower of the wronged party and her three assistants, after meticulously pressing all possible combinations of buttons on the register, established that no rebate was forthcoming, so the lady was therefore only going to take those bars of chocolate on sale, and re-select the remainder so as to fit the conditions of the special offer. Meanwhile, I have sprouted several gray hairs and can literally see my milk turning bad from being out too long on account of this lady. Immersed with the consideration of exactly what I would tell my profs to excuse my certain absence on Monday (still stuck in the line at Mirgros) I almost missed the lady paying with the promise of reimbursement and special assistance in re-selecting her chocolate choices.

//rant

PS: is it weird that I already had a tag for 'grocery shopping'?