Thanksgiving Shopping

I haven’t written in a while. Don’t know why. Writer’s block perhaps. Bored perhaps. It certainly isn’t because life hasn’t provided more than its share of the bizarre worthy of putting down on paper (there’s an anachronistic metaphor).

If anything, I haven’t had the space in my head to really think about being coherent. That being said, if I did more writing, I’d probably have more space in my head to be coherent. That discipline thing has always been a challenge for me.

So I’ve been thinking more and more through the past week that I need to start writing again. And then, the breakthrough happened.

It was all because of a guy named John. That’s his real name. John. I’ve talked to John before, on several occasions. I think John is probably in management, but sometimes he works the cashier line at the Schnucks’ in Webster Groves. Schnucks’. “The Friendliest Store In Town.” Schnucks’ supermarkets made the front page of the WSJ a couple of years ago as having the shortest wait times for checking out of any major chain in the country. My anecdotal experience leads me to believe that that statistic is true.

So today Dan and I were doing our Thanksgiving shopping. All of it. From Wednesday evening through Saturday morning. Plus a few extras thrown in on top of all that. As I stood in the checkout line and watched John pass barcode after barcode over the little red laser light, I watched the number at the bottom of the video screen conveniently placed for everyone to see. It was growing, and growing. Over $260. I was – in a word – appalled. That was even after my 75 cent coupon.

Now as Dan will attest I am no stranger to getting into conversations with the cashiers at Schnucks’. One still remembers Mom coming through, and we’ve talked about that. I know too much information about some of these people. But I’ve never really talked to John.

So as I was swiping the card through the reader to pay for this monstrous grocery cart of gluttony, I said to John, “You know, where we shopped before we moved here – they would give us a free ice cream cone if we spent more than a hundred buck.” You go Stew Leonard’s. So John starts looking around “Here’s a pen,” he says as he tries to hand me a ballpoint. We laugh. He makes some snide comment I can’t remember. Dan and I walk out to the parking lot.

So there we are loading the mountain of groceries into the back of the car. And all of a sudden I hear “Excuse me.” It was John. He had followed us out into the parking lot. He says “This is instead of your damn ice cream cone.” And he hands me a $3.00 off coupon for my next visit to Schnucks.’

Except for the cursing, it certainly does seem like the friendliest store in town.