Weekend Shopping Adventures
I HATE WEEKEND SHOPPING!
This weekend I made the terrible mistake of doing my grocery shopping on late Saturday morning. Normally, I do my shopping early on a early Saturday morning, around 7am or on late on a weekday, around 9:00pm. I have discovered that this is the best time to do grocery shopping because essentially people who do grocery shopping in my area are normally in bed at this time.
The “people” who do grocery shopping at my local Westfield’s on a Saturday can be defined in two groups. (1) Pensioners, rampaging through the aisles of Coles with this “I’m old let me through” mentality and (2) mothers with “power prams”, with the “I’m a mother with a pram let me through” mentality.
Just to clarify, a “power pram” can be described the same as a power car. Most of the Saturday grocery shopping mothers drive “Jeeps” or Jeep style four wheel drive cars.
Essentially, these cars scare the living crap out of all the other cars, because if you don’t move they will trample you and if you do get in their way the mothers absolutely lose the plot and get out of their car and abuse you while trying to calm an army of children in the back seat, explaining to them that “Mum is yelling because this evil woman stole my car park”. (By evil I think they mean “woman without child”).
Now, back to the power stroller. So basically the power stroller is just like the four wheel drive that the mothers drive but it’s a pram. The ingenious thing is that “Jeep”, as in the car brand, have also designed a pram, which is just as massive and high powered as the car. The baby sits up high, towering over all the other children, the brakes have suspension, there is a cup/bottle holder, a cover for when it rains, and the wheels are big enough to crush your feet.
So, on any given Saturday after 9:00am these mothers, their power cars and strollers and their children descend on my local Westfields.
I arrived at my local shops at 11:30am. I drove down to the bottom level parking and as I came down the ramp a man walked in front of my car and told me to follow him into the next aisle and I could have his parking spot. “Sweet” I thought, half my luck!
Anyway, I followed him into the next aisle, stopped put my blinker on and waited for him to exit the parking spot. It took a while as there were a few people going in and out of spots but we waited patiently and when it was safe for him to exit he did. I then began to turn the wheel and just as I began to enter the spot a woman from the third aisle drove into my spot.
Now to explain this better imagine 3 parking aisle with double spaces on each side. I was waiting in the middle aisle with a parking spot which backed onto another aisle of parking spots in the third lane. Basic car park etiquette would suggest that if you are in the middle aisle you get the spots that you can most easily enter and exit out of in that same aisle, not using car parking spots to cross over the aisles.
So when the man left the parking spot I was to enter, this woman drove over a parking spot, which she could have parked in, that was in the third aisle and drove into my spot.
Now what angered me was that the horn on my car wasn’t working so I couldn’t make it loud a clear that what she did was wrong. On top of that she parked the car, switched it off and pretended to be searching for something in her lap.
As luck or karma as I prefer to believe had it, another spot opened up on my right hand side and I parked their instead, but I decided to sit in the car and wait for the women to get out of her car so I could give her a piece of my mind. So I sat and waited and watched and she my friends did the same thing, clearly she knew she had done wrong and didn’t want to get out of the car and deal with me.
When I finally got out of the car she keep searching for nothing in her lap only looking up occasionally to see where I was. When I began walking to the lifts she kept her eye on me and when I stood waiting for the lifts she keep watching and searching her lap.
What irritated me more than anything was the fact that this woman was older in years, at least 65 and she acted dumb and naive. This irritates me greatly. She played the whole I’m old, your young card. I think she knew that I wouldn’t confront her because she was older and it wouldn’t be polite, and she thought if she didn’t beep her horn by now she won’t get in my face.
Now, I must admit her age did stop me. I have a grandmother that age and even though she has a sharp tongue, like most elderly people, I would avoid a confrontation with her at all cost based on her age. I have this basic guilt notion in my mind that what if I upset her and she gets sick I will feel like it’s because of our argument.
I really believe that all elderly people play the “I’m old and will die soon so you don’t want to upset me and then live with that guilt for the rest of your life” card. That’s why in their old age they get away with being rude and arrogant.
So I get into the centre and head for Coles. I begin in the fruit section and as I pick through mandarins a mother in her power pram drives right into the back of my legs. I am left with a massive bruise and grazed skin. I turn and exclaim “ouch” but she just looks ahead as if I’m invisible.
I then head into the first aisle. An elderly woman leaves her trolley in the middle of the aisle and bends over stretching herself over the other part of the aisle. Nothing can pass this fortress she has created.
“Excuse me, excuse me” I scream and she doesn’t hear me. So, I go to move her trolley so I can pass and she turns around and in an angry and frustrated voice yells “Excuse me, but that’s my trolley”. I stand there in shock for a few moments, manage to compose myself and tell her “I’m sorry but you left the trolley in the middle of the aisle and I was not able to pass from it”, to which she replies “Well if you just asked me to move it”. By this point I had had enough and said “Well I did say excuse me a few times but clearly you chose not to hear me” and I walked off, to which I heard her grumble “rude young woman”.
Then in the dairy aisle a mother holding her child in her arms as well as a carton of milk and a glass jar of olives dropped the olives which smashed on the floor and split all over my shoes. The child was hysterical so instead of apologising she simply smacked the child and said “See what you made me do” and looked at me and said “it’s really hard shopping with kids” and walked off. I thought I’d point out that she only had one kid with her but she had already run half way out the store. So I stood in the aisle and waited for one of the sales assistants to walk past to get them to clean up the mess.
The rest of my travels through Coles were uneventful until I got to the registers. Because there are so many people on the weekend the lines for the aisles are slightly undefined. I was waiting for about 25 minutes to get to the front when a woman, who could hardly speak English, or at least pretended to hardly speak English pushed in front and said “sori sori my huband wait for me, need to go he wait, be quick only milk only milk”. To make matters worse the cashier then served her explaining to me in broken English “only milk sveetheart she be quick, you young girl you be nice and vait”. So the elderly woman was served, and while she was being served she and the cashier had a conversation. Now the irony was that I could understand what they were saying and basically the conversation was the cashier telling the woman what days she worked so that she could be served by her and receive “a small” discount.
After my sale was processed I then went to the front desk and asked for a complaint form. A petty reaction I am sure but sometimes a written complaint can give so much satisfaction.
Well I think that’s enough vilification for one day. Now you can see why I hate shopping on weekends.
P.S Check out Hannah’s blog where she talks about the joys of owning her own car
