When I go shopping, I’m on a mission from God. I have my list, gas in the car, coffee, and my oversized reusable shopping bags. I plan my trip when traffic is the lightest. My time is valuable.
Shopping is not an experience. I do not need ambiance. It is not a long-term excursion. Shopping carts do not have luggage racks.
Shopping is a necessary chore to complete. I want to perform it efficiently and with speed. I want to go to stores, get my stuff, pay my money, and get out as fast as I can.
There is a new phenomenon in big box or club stores. This uncivilized cultural anomaly was brought about by savage primitive over-privileged and indulged twenty and thirty-somethings.
These primitives believe shopping aisles are gathering places, like wells, cooking fires, and village squares. Every place the village idiots casually run into each other is an excuse for a community meeting, social Kumbaya moment, or group grope.
These savages congregate, sometimes with their crotch critters, to hold gabfests in store aisles. While merrily hugging, air-kissing, gossiping, and sipping their multi-ingredient dairy-free coffees, they effectively block anyone from going down the aisles.
They are oblivious to the needs of civilized people who want to shop.
In the old days, this would not be a problem. One would just crash through them or loudly tell them to get the expletive deleted out of the way. Those days are long gone. Now, we must submit to the whims of savages.
Shoppers facing these savages will turn around to find another aisle or go all the way around and back to the same one to get what they need, then turn around again. They will avoid confrontation at all costs, no matter the inconvenience.
Shopping aisles are for people who are buying goods and spending money. They are not village squares where village idiots gather to catch up with each other’s dull, worthless, meaningless lives.
If this cultural trend continues, these people will start holding tailgate-style shopping cart parties in the aisles. Imagine twenty and thirty-somethings grilling brats, drinking artisan craft beer, and having a wonderful time in aisle 6. At the same time, their crumb-crunching crawlers gambol on the floor.
Since I come from the last generation of America, the Brave, I don’t care about anyone’s oh-so-tender sensitive feelings. I could care less about their self-esteem. I do not care about their infant or toddler sproglodytes.
I am on a mission. You are in my way for no good reason. You will be offended. I will get through. Mission accomplished.
I am not a total boor. I will approach you, tap your cart with mine, and say something like, “Please, do you ever so mind moving so I can get the f#$king whatever it is I came down this aisle for.”
I do not stop moving.
If you hesitate or show offense to your sensitive feelings, I will be pushing your cart out of my way. If your nose mining devil spawn is in it, that is your problem.
If you are a gaggle of geese honking your soup coolers, I will wade in with my cart so that I can get my needs. Your feather-brained flock is an obstruction to be conquered.
Some people leave their carts, blocking aisles, to gather someplace else and socialize. I like taking one of the shopping carts, preferably the most loaded one, and moving it to the other end of the store.
If you leave your cart unattended with your muff monkey, I will seek out a store employee and report an abandoned child in the aisle. I do my civic duty.
If you even think of criticizing my “uncivilized” behavior towards your savagery, be warned. Look up vile in the dictionary. The first definition is my name. I will send you out running and screaming for your mommy if you have one.
If I know one of the store employees or managers, I will ask them how to arrange a picnic or shopping cart party in an aisle. When he gives me a look of the pathetically obtuse, I will explain about the gossiping gropers having a great time in that now closed aisle.
I was thinking of getting one of those canned air horns and a large battery-operated blinking light. That would liven up their social community gathering experience when I come bowling down the blocked aisle, blinking and blaring.
Store aisles are not social spaces where you gather to talk about creatures named Kardashian, the color and odor of diaper contents, the hot personal trainer at the gym, or the latest pet trick your bumbling bratzilla can perform.
Aisles are not for a group discussion on lawn care, plucking and tweezing versus threading, waxing your nether regions, or the latest reality show.
Store aisles are for getting from point A to B to C, eventually to the checkout lane. Shopping is just that, shopping. Stores are not places where you loiter, blocking the aisles like gangbangers or dope dealers on a street corner.
Call me rude, call me insensitive, call me anything you like. I will shop. I will move you out of my way, verbally or with my cart.
While you are complaining to your oversensitive friends or store management about being offended, I will be in the checkout line.