Tag Archives: shopping

The Crazy Old Doll Woman of Toys “R” Us

6 Sep

September 6, 2012

It began simply enough. Saarah and I had decided to shoot some pool. The pool hall was in Bay Ridge and we parked close by but first I had to stop at the bank. We walked down the avenue and passed a store with milk on sale for $1.99 a gallon, a really good price. Saarah needed milk and we planned to pick up a gallon on the way home. So we continued to the bank and then went back the same way, passing the store again, and finally to the pool hall.

It was awful. I couldn’t sink a ball for the life of me. I missed easy shots, bounced the cue ball off the table time after time, and somehow even lost the grip on my stick and sent it shooting across the hall like a javelin. Luckily nothing was hurt except my pride. And Saarah? She is some kind of superpro. If she ever tries to play you for money, run like the wind. She was awesome and left me with a serious feeling of inadequacy that only the very pathetic can know, like whenever the New York Mets step onto a baseball diamond.

We left and walked to the milk store and before we knew it we were all the way past the bank. We had somehow missed the store. So we walked back and before we knew it we were all the way past the pool hall. We had somehow missed the store. Again.

The store was gone. Not closed, gone. It was a little after 5 in the afternoon and in the scant hour that had passed the store had vanished. We could not even find a sign for a store that would have sold milk.

If it ever existed to begin with.

But the day went on, as days do, and we shopped a little and ate dinner and had a great desert and I even managed to forget how much Saarah totally annihilated me at pool. We started talking about games. We’d bowled recently and just shot pool and Saarah decided that the next game she would beat me in would be chess. Problem is, she didn’t have a chess set and mine was missing a few important pieces, like a knight and both rooks. And the board.

We decided to buy one at Toys “R” Us and that is where this story really starts.

This was Labor Day and it was around 8:30 at night. There were, counting us, (and I counted), only 6 customers in the store. They were getting ready to close and we were walking around, having picked out a chess set, looking at the toys and just generally having fun as I always do with Saarah. We were in the action figure aisle and I was drooling over some toys that I’d buy if only I had a zillion extra dollars when we heard screaming from not too far away, a man and a woman.

“I’m not buying that! I’m broke!”
“Yes you are buying this for me!”
“I have no money, I’m in debt! I can’t buy it!”
“I’m going to put it on your credit card and you’re going to pay for it!”
“I already owe all my friends money!”
“I DON’T CARE YOU’RE BUYING THIS FOR ME!”

We looked over and saw a man, around 55 years old, stomping out of the doll aisle with, literally, his hands waving in the air like he was either trying to wave the woman’s words away or he was signifying that the last of his sanity was slowly seeping out of his head. He had clearly been through this before. As he rushed away, he was still yelling about how he was broke, how he owed everyone money, that his credit cards were over the limit, etc.

It was pretty much like this

Saarah and I started laughing. And we only laughed harder when we saw that the screaming woman was about 75 years old, probably the guy’s mother. She had four or five dolls in her arms, and one of her arms had a black brace on it. She was dumping them into a wagon with some more dolls in it, though I did not get a good enough look to be able to count.

She started shouting.

“Can someone help me here?”
“I need help with the dolls!”
“SOMEBODY HELP ME WITH THE DOLLS!”
“WHERE IS ALL THE HELP!”
“I NEED SOMBEEODY TO HELP ME IN THE DOLL SECTION!”
“WHERE IS ANYBODY TO GET A DOLL FOR ME I CAN’T REACH!”
“NOW!”
“I know you work here COME AND HELP ME!”

As I said, the store was empty. Out of the six customers, two had left, the old woman’s son was MIA, and Saarah and I were just laughing together in the clearance section. There was plenty of sales help to assist the old woman.

The problem was, no one wanted to go near her.

“I NEED HELP!”

She sure did.

We had a clear view of, not ten feet away, an employee shaking his head and trying to get some other employee (out of our line of vision) to go over and help her. He did not want to go over there, in the worst way. And al lthis time the woman was still screaming at the top of her lungs.

“Hey, can’t you come over here? I need help! HELP!” Oops, she spotted him.

“Yes ma’am, sorry, I didn’t hear you.” That was about as bold-faced a lie as I ever heard, and I have told some whoppers myself.

Saarah and I walked around a little more, being nasty and mean and making fun of the woman (to ourselves) who, in all seriousness, has a screw loose. Her son obviously can’t afford to buy any more dolls but she doesn’t care at all. Either she is a hoarder or a shopaholic or, as someone who will remain nameless suggested, just a selfish old be-otch.

Saarah simply wondered why the son would have taken her to Toys “R” Us to begin with.

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Grocery Shopping. What a Chore (Classic Repost)

4 Jul

July 5, 2012

This the day after the Fourth of July. Assuming that you have not blown a few fingers off, enjoy this true tale of the shopping game.

From April 19, 2011

Who doesn’t love grocery shopping? The excitement of the weekly sales, the delicious aroma of the deli department, the raw sexual thrill of squeezing the ripe melons, the firm, ripe melons, big, juicy melons… give me a second here.

Where was I? Oh, sorry, grocery shopping. Lost myself for a minute there.

Grocery shopping is a chore, pretty much by definition. And chores are not particularly fun. We wouldn’t call them “chores” if they were. Chopping wood is a chore. Lugging your mother-in-law to her book club (or pretty much anywhere- hey, it’s the mother-in-law) is a chore. Going to the strip club is not a chore. See what I mean? And damn if I’m not back to melons again.

Anyway, like most Americans I go grocery shopping once a week. Oh sure, some people go once a month and stock up at some big box joint where you can get mayonnaise in 50-gallon drums. Who needs that much mayonnaise? Unless you own a restaurant I really don’t want to know. And yes, I specifically mean Americans. I’m sorry Canadians, I have nothing against you but a lot of you speak French and that just won’t do. North America is an English-speaking continent, that is if you ignore large parts of  The United States in general and about 2/3 of New York City in particular.

But enough of that. This blog is about grocery shopping and dammit, I’m going to get to the point if it kills me.

Yeah, well see.

I was at Waldbaum’s last week. I’m usually a Shop Rite kind of guy but Waldbaum’s was within walking distance so there I was. Like many a grocery store, this one has the fruit and vegetables section right up front. Oh, sorry, I mean “produce section,” as in “the fruit and vegetable section had trouble “producing” an edible orange. They were all old and wrinkly, like your grandmother but not as kindly. So no oranges this week.

This store very conveniently has the meat department running parallel to the produce, because nothing goes with a pound of bananas like a roast beef. I picked up some steak and naturally wanted some potatoes for an all-American meal. (Again, sorry Canadians.) This is where I encountered a phenomena I have only found a Waldbaum’s.

You can buy potatoes in five-pound bags or if you are like me and are not afraid of another potato famine you can get some loose ones and only buy two or three. And herein lies the rub. The loose potatoes are ready for baking, meaning they are already wrapped in tin foil. How hard is it to wrap your own potato anyway? I don’t like buying potatoes sight unseen. A potato should not be a mystery.

I left them behind because who knows what was under the foil- black spots, potato bugs, maybe not even a potato at all or worse- a potato with an eye. A blinking eye. I didn’t want to deal with that so I decided to get some sweet potatoes or, failing that some yams, their near-identical Patty Duke Show-like cousins.

But where were they? Logic says that they should be right next to the baking potatoes. However, anyone who has ever scanned their receipt knows that grocery stores have nothing to do with logic. I couldn’t find them anywhere. OK, so no oranges or potatoes this week.

Other items I did not get this week were frozen mixed vegetables (in the steamer bags) and sugar-free Klondike bars. Draw your own conclusions about my diet.

In all honesty, I can’t claim that they didn’t have the  Klondike bars. Judging from the mostly empty freezer case that’s a good bet but I never got close enough to find out for sure. The dairy aisle is about 25% wider to accommodate the doors on the freezer cases. Problem is, the middle 50% of the aisle was taken up with stuff I’ll get to later after I see if I can master some basic math. Bear with me.

The aisle is 125% the size of a normal aisle.
50% of it was taken up.
Therefore, the aisle either
A- left Detroit at 10:15 going 50 miles per hour while another aisle headed toward it left Lansing at 11 pm going 60 miles per hour
or
B- was 62.5% the size of a regular aisle and therefore totally defeated the purpose of the extra room.

I’m no mathematician. I pick A.

The aisle was packed with Super Bowl displays. Yes, in April. They had more types of chips than I ever thought existed. They had some sort of lime-tequila flavored nachos but not a single decent orange back in produce. Go figure.

But that wasn’t all. There was a guy packing out butter into the cold case and of course, there were about 200 cases of butter in the aisle. There were also about 200 empty cases that formerly held butter scattered about. Farther down the aisle was a display of razors, which seems incongruous but by then I needed to shave since it took so long to wend my way down the aisle that I had some stubble coming in. And being out of razors, I put one in my wagon.

All that was annoying, all that was stupid- and need I mention the people who decide to stop in the middle of the narrow aisle and have conversations about anything but groceries? But none of that was the single item that pissed me off.

In the midst of this chaos aisle was a long, low table whose crude sign proclaimed BROKEN GROCERYIES 75 PER-CENTS OFF.  So was that 75 cents off or 75 percent off? It didn’t matter, I wouldn’t buy any of it for 100% off.

What was on the table? Damn little. A carton of milk that expired that day. A trio of squished loaves of bread. Two cartons of eggs that were mostly broken. This is a great store to shop if you like buying your eggs pre-cracked.

By the time I was ready to get the Hell out of Dodge but I forgot to get some carrots so I went back to the produce section where either a serial killer or a guy from the meat department- you can’t tell which just by the bloody white smock- was yelling to an elderly woman holding a cut of meat and pointing to the label “Listen lady I don’t know what that means! I got turkeys to put out. They don’t fly you know!”

I had to go around him and his non-flying turkeys, which really could be any turkeys in the world in any state of health, and so went past a display I had ignored earlier on: the firm, ripe, juicy melons.

It was while ogling- er, looking at the melons, that I saw them: the sweet potatoes. Right between the cantaloupes and the honeydews were the sweet potatoes. Really, how silly was I for not looking there in the first place?

I got on one of the only two open checkout lines and then the only good thing that happened all day happened then. The roof caved in destroyed the store.

No, no, the lane right next to me opened up and I zoomed in and was first. And luckily the cashier knew what he was doing and checked me out correctly despite the handicap of having more piercings than an eyebrow generally has. He even managed to scan my coupon without calling a supervisor.

So my friends and you Canadians too, I leave you with these parting words of wisdom: “Listen lady I don’t know what that means! I got turkeys to put out. They don’t fly you know!”

Indeed.

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