bah, humbug

I’m Erin, and I hate the holidays. I really, really do. Sure, I like the part where people get together and laugh and have fun, and I do like to see the twinkly lights that all my neighbors have hung, and I even enjoy the cheesy holiday specials and all-holiday-music programming on the radio stations. But I can’t stand all the shopping and the rushing around and the being generally rude to store clerks and fellow drivers and fellow shoppers. I was in the Hobby Lobby earlier this week. The Hobby Lobby is one of my favorite stores, because it’s basically a Giant Warehouse of Potential Unfinished Projects. And we all know how I treasure and cherish my Unfinished Projects. So, I’m there, in my favorite store, which is usually quiet, because I visit in the evenings when most other Hobbyists are home cooking dinner and getting the kids ready for bed. But this night was not like any other night, because some lady had let her 2 kids loose in the store, and while they were running up and down the aisles screaming at each other (which was really kind of cute for the first 2 aisles and then got REALLY OLD, REALLY FAST), she was nowhere to be found. And all of the other shoppers were walking around with that look that Heidi described as “trying to look irritated and trying to pretend like it’s not happening, all at the same time”. After some time, I make my way up to the front of the store, and I see that the lady is now up there, and the kids have finally joined her, but that hasn’t calmed them down at all. In fact, they’re still both screaming, and one of them is actually in the cart, jumping up and down. And all the while, she is just doing the normal checkout activities like nothing is at all out of the ordinary, while the rest of us in line are doing The Look again. Ergh. So, while all this is going on, the strangest development EVER happens, right behind me. There are basically 3 lanes open, but they’re all bunched together so there’s kind of a cluster of shoppers and not a lot of order. And the lady behind me has a cart with about 20 little various items. And the lady behind her has one spool of ribbon, the kind you take and wrap around an entire tree. And the Ribbon Lady says to the Cart Lady, “Um, excuse me, Hi, I only have one item, and you have a lot of items, and I was wondering if you could let me go ahead of you so I can just get out of here.”…I’m going to pause here and let you soak this in, because that’s what Cart Lady did, and that’s actually what I was doing, too. Keep in mind that I’m actually in the checkout process, so my place in line is neither threatened nor even negotiable at this point. I am merely observing this interaction. So, I’m thinking to myself, “Is this right? This isn’t how it works, right? You don’t ask to go ahead. People offer that, if they notice.” Certainly, people have done that for me before, but I’ve never asked. So Cart Lady starts stammering her way through some sort of apologetic “no, I need to get out of here and I was even thinking about leaving without this stuff” story, and the whole time, I’m getting angrier and angrier at Ribbon Lady. And Ribbon Lady actually has a rebuttal of “but I only have one thing,” and thankfully, Cart Lady stuck to her guns, because really, it’s not Cart Lady’s fault that Ribbon Lady only had one thing. I mean, come on. So Ribbon Lady is pulling out all the stops to make Cart Lady look like some kind of jerk for not letting her go in front, and just when I’m thinking I’m maybe going to interject and say something, but I can’t even begin to figure out what the appropriate comment is here, some lady from the next line over says, “Here, you can go in front of me. It’s not that big of a deal!” As if Cart Lady is just The Worst Person Ever to Walk the Face of the Earth, and I’m now thinking to myself “I wonder how the lady behind Martyr Lady feels about this, since Martyr Lady just let Ribbon Lady in front of her, too.” And I finally decided to just flee the building because I didn’t even know where to start to make this right. And because the 2 Screaming Banshees were STILL screaming.

 

Side note to Ribbon Lady: It is considerate and kind when people notice you only have one item and offer to let you go in front of them. It is rude, inconsiderate, and selfish for you to ASK anyone to do that for you. So yeah, if you wonder why I hate the holidays, it’s stuff like that.