I hate supermarkets

Where else but a supermarket would it take 20 minutes to buy one item? First you have to search for it in a bewildering array of aisles and products. Then once you have found it, prepare to wait in line behind someone doing a month’s shopping for a family of eight. (Or, if it’s the express lane, a family of eight buying five items each.)

I was at home one weekday morning when I realised I was out of deodorant, so off to the supermarket I went. (It helped that I didn’t have to work that day.) One thing about supermarkets on a weekday morning is that all of the shoppers are either young mothers or very old women. No men of any age, apart from me. It makes sense really. I would go to the supermarket at a time when everyone there is like me if I could. Which would mean, in my case, young men who hate supermarkets. We would be like a community; a community based on hate, united by our hatred of supermarkets; which is somewhat freaky if you think about it, so don’t.

I found the deodorant and bought a few other items as well, so as not to have to do a return trip. (Hate makes you buy more, apparently.) I then lined up at an “8 Items Or Less” counter behind two 90-year-old women who had one or two items each.

Or so I thought. The first one was carrying two items, but when she got to the counter, she reached into her bag and pulled out seven or eight other items. The woman behind her helped her handle the items. Isn’t that nice, I thought.

Then it was the second woman’s turn. She had been carrying one item; chocolate biscuits. She put the biscuits on the counter, and than she started pulling items out of her bag! She had a dozen extra items in there.

So there I was, trying to choose the quickest checkout queue, lured into the line I chose under false pretences by two ancient item-smuggling women.

Have you been duped by item smugglers? Let’s make a law that all supermarket items must be visible until after you have bought them. Join with me on a campaign to rid the world of this time-wasting menace today!