MISERY AND LOATHING IN THE CHECK-OUT LINE
BY DELL FRANKLIN
I’m in the cavernous chain drug store, with a single purchase, a tooth brush I should have bought at the Dollar store, and at this busy hour there’s only one checker and a long line and there seems no other employees in sight to open up one of the other registers. There must be 9 or 10 people before me and a harried young girl is struggling to wait on them. I think she’s new. I should put this tooth brush back and go to the Dollar store like a person with common sense, but one of the few considerations about my health is taking care of my teeth. Razor blades are one thing, a tooth brush another.
A couple fossils are in line toting laxatives and Preparation H, etc. A girl with green hair and a ring in her nose is behind a couple middle-aged sloths with belly and dour expressions, steeped in disappointment as they approach the end of the line with little excitement on the horizon. There’s a tall, gangly guy with buzz-cut, long neck and bulging Adams Apple, and a forehead that takes up two thirds of his face and puckers in what’s left. In the middle of the line is a local high-profile homosexual who’s quite flamboyant and enjoys being observed wherever he goes. He’s around 35, with long, bleached blond hair.
The line is moving very slowly. A fossil at the register is having trouble completing the credit card process with quivering fingers. The halfwit employee is trying to guide him. Everybody’s restless and peering around for help. The buzz-cut geek, with spindly arms and a white short-sleeved shirt, holds three grey-white plastic ducks, and I wonder what he’s going to do with them. They’re ugly, nondescript ducks that, to me, have no purpose. Is he going to place these ghastly ducks on a mantle for ambience? I’ve seen him around in the local market, herky-jerky, a stickler at the check-out counter as he eyes prices on the ribbon of the computer, always paying with exact cash and change dug out of the coin purse in his wallet.
I have no idea what this geek does for a living, but the gay man is staring at him with arctic distaste. This queen is behind the green hair, in front of a quivering fossil couple. He repeatedly sighs and rolls his eyes at any one of us, expressing his exasperation with the situation.
A couple more people have lined up behind me, one a hefty woman with tons of crap in a cart. She wants to know where all the employees are. Playing the expert, I tell her I guess they are on a break, because it is past lunch time. Another person behind me asks if they’ve all taken a break at the same time. I state that I don’t know, but perhaps they’re under-staffed, or it is written in their union contracts that they MUST take their breaks at a designated time whether there’s nobody in the store or fifty people clamoring to get through one line.
Dispirited, they shake their heads and grumble as the geek arrives at the register and is immediately squabbling with the checker over the price of his fucking ducks, insisting they are on sale for $1.99 a piece. I can think of no item in the store that is this cheap and furthermore have no idea how any person of authority could arrive at a decision to manufacture these ducks, much less sell them to a national conglomerate and expect anybody to buy them, unless some marketing computer tells them to target people like this geek.
The poor checker is growing rattled as the line grows. She tells the geek over and over that the ducks are $2.99 a piece. When she scrapes them along the machine, $2.99 pops up on the computer ribbon. The geek is having none of it. He wants the manager. The poor girl sighs as two new people behind me leave their crap on a table and leave. She picks up the phone and over the intercom running throughout the store, pages the manager to come to register #1.
The green hair girl asks the checker why none of the other registers are open when they’re so busy. The checker doesn’t know why. She shrugs. The geek is jangling around like a puppet belonging to a hyperactive puppeteer.
“Give him the goddam ducks for Chrissake,” cries the fossil ahead of me. “I got things to do!”
The manager arrives, a plain, pudgy man with mustache, pens in shirt pocket, copious keys on a chain hanging from his belt, badge on chest reading LARRY. Larry explains to the geek that the ducks are $2.99. The geek maintains they were advertised in their circular for $1.99. The manager feels he, the geek, got the ducks mixed up with an item beside them. The geek’s having none of this and is not budging from his position. The manager finally lays the law down and says he either wants the ducks or he doesn’t. The geek says he’s going home to get the circular that will prove the manager is wrong and then leaves the ducks on the counter and walks off in springy steps, like a majorette.
Everybody is relieved when the manager announces he’s opening register #2, and those at the front of the line can be waited upon first. There is a polite stampede for positioning, nobody stooping to pettiness, a tribute to the laid back Central Coast. The queen is next in line, but here comes a woman in clacking stiletto high heels, skinny jeans, silk blouse, hair coiffed, very pretty, but somewhat pinched. In a huff, she announces she is late for a huge appointment, pushes past us, including the gay man, and plunks down her basket of purchases. She offers no apologies or thanks for cutting in, indicating her comings ands goings hold far more importance and urgency than ours, so deal with it.
She’s got her credit card out at the ready and is also on her cell phone, which she snared from her holster when it jingled. She is outwardly impatient as the bumbling new girl plods along, failing to notice the queen furtively slither his hand into her basket and filch her Kotex and drop it in his basket of beauty aids. He turns toward me, meeting my gaze and haughtily lifting his face in a manner indicating he is perfectly within his rights to steal the bitch’s Kotex. I nod my approval.
Everybody witnesses it. The bitch quickly collects her canvas bag of purchases and, phone to her ear, continues her staccato of high heels as she marches out, while the gay man informs the checker he has absolutely no idea how this goddam Kotex found its way into HIS basket.
I’m in the cavernous chain drug store, with a single purchase, a tooth brush I should have bought at the Dollar store, and at this busy hour there’s only one checker and a long line and there seems no other employees in sight to open up one of the other registers. There must be 9 or 10 people before me and a harried young girl is struggling to wait on them. I think she’s new. I should put this tooth brush back and go to the Dollar store like a person with common sense, but one of the few considerations about my health is taking care of my teeth. Razor blades are one thing, a tooth brush another.
A couple fossils are in line toting laxatives and Preparation H, etc. A girl with green hair and a ring in her nose is behind a couple middle-aged sloths with belly and dour expressions, steeped in disappointment as they approach the end of the line with little excitement on the horizon. There’s a tall, gangly guy with buzz-cut, long neck and bulging Adams Apple, and a forehead that takes up two thirds of his face and puckers in what’s left. In the middle of the line is a local high-profile homosexual who’s quite flamboyant and enjoys being observed wherever he goes. He’s around 35, with long, bleached blond hair.
The line is moving very slowly. A fossil at the register is having trouble completing the credit card process with quivering fingers. The halfwit employee is trying to guide him. Everybody’s restless and peering around for help. The buzz-cut geek, with spindly arms and a white short-sleeved shirt, holds three grey-white plastic ducks, and I wonder what he’s going to do with them. They’re ugly, nondescript ducks that, to me, have no purpose. Is he going to place these ghastly ducks on a mantle for ambience? I’ve seen him around in the local market, herky-jerky, a stickler at the check-out counter as he eyes prices on the ribbon of the computer, always paying with exact cash and change dug out of the coin purse in his wallet.
I have no idea what this geek does for a living, but the gay man is staring at him with arctic distaste. This queen is behind the green hair, in front of a quivering fossil couple. He repeatedly sighs and rolls his eyes at any one of us, expressing his exasperation with the situation.
A couple more people have lined up behind me, one a hefty woman with tons of crap in a cart. She wants to know where all the employees are. Playing the expert, I tell her I guess they are on a break, because it is past lunch time. Another person behind me asks if they’ve all taken a break at the same time. I state that I don’t know, but perhaps they’re under-staffed, or it is written in their union contracts that they MUST take their breaks at a designated time whether there’s nobody in the store or fifty people clamoring to get through one line.
Dispirited, they shake their heads and grumble as the geek arrives at the register and is immediately squabbling with the checker over the price of his fucking ducks, insisting they are on sale for $1.99 a piece. I can think of no item in the store that is this cheap and furthermore have no idea how any person of authority could arrive at a decision to manufacture these ducks, much less sell them to a national conglomerate and expect anybody to buy them, unless some marketing computer tells them to target people like this geek.
The poor checker is growing rattled as the line grows. She tells the geek over and over that the ducks are $2.99 a piece. When she scrapes them along the machine, $2.99 pops up on the computer ribbon. The geek is having none of it. He wants the manager. The poor girl sighs as two new people behind me leave their crap on a table and leave. She picks up the phone and over the intercom running throughout the store, pages the manager to come to register #1.
The green hair girl asks the checker why none of the other registers are open when they’re so busy. The checker doesn’t know why. She shrugs. The geek is jangling around like a puppet belonging to a hyperactive puppeteer.
“Give him the goddam ducks for Chrissake,” cries the fossil ahead of me. “I got things to do!”
The manager arrives, a plain, pudgy man with mustache, pens in shirt pocket, copious keys on a chain hanging from his belt, badge on chest reading LARRY. Larry explains to the geek that the ducks are $2.99. The geek maintains they were advertised in their circular for $1.99. The manager feels he, the geek, got the ducks mixed up with an item beside them. The geek’s having none of this and is not budging from his position. The manager finally lays the law down and says he either wants the ducks or he doesn’t. The geek says he’s going home to get the circular that will prove the manager is wrong and then leaves the ducks on the counter and walks off in springy steps, like a majorette.
Everybody is relieved when the manager announces he’s opening register #2, and those at the front of the line can be waited upon first. There is a polite stampede for positioning, nobody stooping to pettiness, a tribute to the laid back Central Coast. The queen is next in line, but here comes a woman in clacking stiletto high heels, skinny jeans, silk blouse, hair coiffed, very pretty, but somewhat pinched. In a huff, she announces she is late for a huge appointment, pushes past us, including the gay man, and plunks down her basket of purchases. She offers no apologies or thanks for cutting in, indicating her comings ands goings hold far more importance and urgency than ours, so deal with it.
She’s got her credit card out at the ready and is also on her cell phone, which she snared from her holster when it jingled. She is outwardly impatient as the bumbling new girl plods along, failing to notice the queen furtively slither his hand into her basket and filch her Kotex and drop it in his basket of beauty aids. He turns toward me, meeting my gaze and haughtily lifting his face in a manner indicating he is perfectly within his rights to steal the bitch’s Kotex. I nod my approval.
Everybody witnesses it. The bitch quickly collects her canvas bag of purchases and, phone to her ear, continues her staccato of high heels as she marches out, while the gay man informs the checker he has absolutely no idea how this goddam Kotex found its way into HIS basket.
