Sunday, September 26, 2010

Zombie Apocalypse - A Story of Triumph

It was a dark and stormy night. 

Wait, wrong story.

It was an overcast and seasonably cool Friday afternoon in September.  Your protagonist was feeling turbo-productive after making the bed, doing the dishes, going to the gym AND taking a shower - all before lunch.  Next on her agenda, she planned to hit up Wal-Mart for some vitamins and assorted toiletries, followed by a major trip to the poor people grocery store.  As soon as she pulled into the Wal-Mart parking lot, the afternoon took a nose-dive from "super optimism and productivity" to "oh god this is unspeakably depressing."

In her malaise, your protagonist tired of speaking in the third person, and abruptly shifted into a first person narrative.  Going to Wal-Mart makes me so sad.  I feel bad for people who have to work there, because, let's face it, Wal-Mart doesn't exactly have the best track record at treating its employees decently or equally.  I feel bad for the smaller stores it drives out of business, I feel bad for people who have to shop there and buy inferior goods, and I feel a little bad for myself for becoming one of those people because I can't really afford to shop somewhere else for certain things right now.  And all that runs through my head before I even get out of my car.  Once I get in the store, I realize how desperate people's situations must be compared to my own.  It seems like having some kind of physical deformity is a prerequisite for working there.  I'm not saying that to belittle anyone who works or shops there, but it's seriously kind of disturbing because I have never ever seen a Wal-Mart employee who looked completely normal and healthy.  And for once I'm not being a jerk, it really breaks my heart. 

But enough of that, let's talk about me now.

So I marched into the store, determined to grab the few items on my list as quickly as possible and then run far, far away from my least favorite dismal big-box establishment.  I crossed the threshold and glanced around for a basket.  I had just a handful of items on my list, and didn't want to bother with a cart.  Carts are unwieldy and they make it too easy for you to buy more than you intend to.  I just wanted a damn basket, but apparently that was too much to ask.  What kind of store doesn't have baskets for the convenience of its customers? 

I grabbed my three bottles of vitamins, bottle of saline solution...so far so good.  Then I approached the face wash.  Somehow I managed to balance the four aforementioned items in one arm while I used my free hand to examine my cleanser choices.  After much deliberation, because they didn't have my normal product and I had to thoroughly vet my replacement options, I made a selection.  I had one final requirement - face lotion.  This is where it all went to shit.  Have I mentioned that I have small hands and ridiculous T-Rex forearms?  I could not seem to find a way to balance three bottles of vitamins, a bottle of saline, and a tube of face wash in one arm.  Huge problem.  How could I pick out a lotion if I couldn't read the ingredients on the back and make side-by-side comparisons of the ingredients of two or more lotions, and then run a rough cost analysis by comparing unit prices, and oh god, there are old ladies trying to shove me out of the way but Jesus I'm just trying to live and I think it's a little too late for you, sister, all the Olay in the world can't help you now, but there is still hope for me just let me stand here and pick out my lotion for the love of all that is sacred and holy.  

Finally I picked out some lotion after dropping my armload of stuff several times, once after some old hag practically rammed me with her cart.  She was either drunk or had cataracts and couldn't see me standing there.  I staggered to the register and had to wait behind some hambones buying multiple four-packs of 5 Hour Energy, but at least the cashier wasn't the same guy who made fun of me for buying a jug of Carlo Rossi a couple months ago. 

I rested in my sun-warmed car for a few minutes, trying to regroup and remind myself how badly I needed to go to the grocery store instead of going home to drink.  I thought about Andy, shivering in a pile of rags, emaciated because I waited another day to go to the grocery store.  I thought about him catching Ajax and roasting him over an open fire in the living room, and how no amount of Febreze would ever get rid of that smell, and how we'd surely lose the security deposit if Andy melted the carpet and/or burned down the entire house.  Love won the day, so I rallied and drove to the grocery store.  I never could bear the thought of jeopardizing my relationship with money.

By this point, it was mid-afternoon, around 2:30.  The parking lot was unusually crowded for a weekday afternoon.  I held a rag over my face as I staggered through the crooked rows of smoking vehicles.  I gingerly stepped over a few brainless corpses the zombies left to simmer in the weak September sun.  Inside the store, the real battle began.

Mothers screaming at crying children.  Old fishwives harping at well-intentioned old men.  Sorority girls on cell phones standing in front of items I needed.  People walking entirely too slowly.  Torture.

Over an hour later, my cart was full and I wanted nothing more than to pay and GET OUT.  Alas, a speedy exit was not in the cards.  All the checkout lines were at least six carts deep, so I chose one at random.  Fifteen minutes later, I was glaring at the sweatpants-clad sorority skanks in front of me, who found it necessary to take up the entire conveyor belt with their three cases of Corona.  As I was seething and waiting for my turn to unload my cart, my phone rang.  Oh Jesus tap-dancing Christ, what do you want? I thought.  I had no idea who was calling, but I was overstimulated, hungry, and annoyed.

I whipped out my phone to silence the ringer when I noticed that it was a local number calling me.  I realized it could be a prospective employer.  I didn't want to answer the phone only to be told I didn't get a job, but I realized that I had to answer, because I never changed my voice mail greeting after I got married, and so they might get confused and think they had the wrong number and I would never find out if I had a job.  So I answered.

I answered the phone, and received the sweetest and best-timed news I have ever heard in my life.  Basically, and I'm paraphrasing here, the woman at the really good grocery store descended from the sky like the fairy godmother of nutrition and told me "My child, you never have to go back to the poor people store again, because we are going to pay you money and give you an 18% discount on our wonderful but expensive food, and you also get a company unicorn on which you may ride to work, and it will always be sunny and warm for as long as you shall work for us." 

What she really said was, "We'd like you to work 12 hours a week on Saturday mornings and Mondays" and then some other stuff that I didn't hear because I started hearing the part that I made up about unicorns and sunshine.

Moral of the story - I'm no longer a derelict.  I am no longer Unemployed.  I have ascended to the ranks of the merely underemployed.  But who knows, I still haven't heard anything about my other interview.  That job would throw another 10 hours per week my way!  Maybe if I find a third job, and then a fourth job, I can manage to rack up a full 40-hour work week.  But, at the rate it took me to find just one job, that could take years. 

P.S.  It took me another 15 minutes to actually get out of the store, because I had to wait for the sorostitutes to pay for their cases of beer in wrinkled, tattered singles and quarters.  They were snickering the entire time, either because they knew they were obnoxiously making a long line of people wait for them to count out about 8 dollars in quarters, or because the provenance of their soiled dollar bills included a sojourn through their G-strings.  Either way, I hope the cashier had some hand sanitizer at his disposal.

4 comments:

  1. hahaha this post made me snort laugh

    good luck on the job thing!

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  2. "She was either drunk or had cataracts and couldn't see me standing there." Or she was like my grandmere and actually rams her cart into people on purpose. I refuse to go shopping with her anymore.

    That's great about the job! I look forward to hearing about whatever funny stuff happens there.

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  3. "sorostitutes" - Just added to my list of awesometastic words. Thank you. Really. This word is a gift :)

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  4. Pancake - That's awesome, and has been my goal all along. And thanks!

    Sarah - Haha, that's terrible. And awesome. The mother on Golden Girls really made little old ladies doing mean things quite the social phenomenon, maybe she's just acting out a fantasy.

    Lisa - You are quite welcome. Just make sure you don't confuse it with 'sorostitot' which is the child version, merely in training for Greek life and the debauchery it holds in store.

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