PWNP Entry #2

Due to the overwhelming response of one person, I have opted to continue the critically acclaimed series of posts titled People Who Need to be Punched.

In today's episode we will cover a truly nasty population of epsilons.  These folks are a cadaverous mob of unobservant and inconsiderate creepers.

Grocery shopping.  Some love it.  Some hate it.  Some do it to survive.  Some do it because their lives are boring and frequenting grocery stores helps them feel like they exist.  Still others patronize because carnival freak-shows have been outlawed and now these people don't have any place to display their attributes except at the local Walmart.

Personally, I enjoy grocery shopping.  Likely, it is because I belong in a freak-show and now have no where to show off my freaky attributes...

There are many frustrating elements to grocery shopping ranging from people who park their carts in the middle of the aisle (there is a special level of Hades for these peeps right next to bad priests) to parents with children who demonstrate why eugenics may not have been such a bad idea.  This post, however, is reserved for a special group of specials.  I shall call them U-scan snipers.

We all have probably used a U-scan by now.  If you haven't, you are also probably still using a flip phone and refer to email as "the email".  These clusters are generally located at the extreme ends of the check out zones.  They are normally limited to 12 items or less which, to my chagrin, has repeatedly demonstrated our nations growing ineptitude for simple mathematics.

The sign says "12 items or less" you window licker, not "12 items or less unless you mean my 24 cans of Kitty Vittles."

These self-service areas are a magnet for me when I am in a hurry.  It elevates two scenes I loath.  First, I don't have to make chit chat with the dull eyed scan boy with H8 tattooed on forehead who is guaranteed to bruise my apples and squish my bread.  Second, it reduces the amount of time I have to try and avert my eyes from the car wreck of magazine covers showing different celebrities in various levels of undress who were photographed without the benefit of an airbrush artist... yikes...  Thank goodness for airbrush artists... My false idea of human beauty can be sustained... wheeew.

The U-scan area seems simple enough to understand.  There are four stations available.  Well, usually there are four.  Sometimes one has the "please ask attendant for assistance" flashing on the screen and when you look at the "attendant", they are clearly ignoring the issue and are staring blankly at the florescent lights overhead.  Sigh...

It is a simple matter of societal organization to figure out how to manage this area.  Customers should form a single line and wait for a machine to become available.  The customer then moves to the open machine and begins the process of doling out hard earned cash on mediocre and likely poisonous food (to hell with you Monsanto!!!!).  Then the sheeple behind that customer wait for the next of the four machines to open and the cycle continues in utopian bliss.

Alas, some people don't like utopia or bliss.  These people wake up wondering how to create chaos.  These people watch reality television.  These people travel 15 mph on the expressway entry ramp.  These people are bad.

Sometimes, instead of the above mentioned simple process being followed, some jackwagon will avoid the obvious line of people, stand off to the side and wait for the next machine to open and rush in to take it.  These fungus don't seem to recognize that the shuffling line of people next to them aren't just waiting there in hopes that someone will offer to buy their groceries but are attempting to bring light out of darkness, peace from war, love from hate. They seem incapable of seeing that there is a process to be followed.  Instead, they wait like thugs in a dark alley lurking for that hapless pedestrian and snipe the next available U-scan.

Worse yet is when you see them creeping and, being a civilized person who recognizes the legitimate purpose of eating utensils, try and let these genetic failures know about the line.  They just stare at you as if you suggested some mystical theory.  Of course, it could be that my passive aggressive nature inhibits my voice from carrying the authority I wish it did.

Inside my head: "Hey pal, do you see the fricken line.  How about you take a couple breathes to oxygenate the two brain cells you have and figure out where the end of the line is, tool."

What I actually say: "Um... Hi... There's kind of a line..."

So, my pansy suggestion gets ignored usually.  Now I must enter a primal place of stand off because if the U-scan atrocity was allowed to continue, as the Riddler so elegantly put it while looking down at the unconscious Batman; "he wouldn't learn nothen".  My whole body language changes.  The fight or flight instinct has been initiated and the fight option has won the day.  I am attempting to watch all four machines at the same time.  Both the sniper and I see that one of the shoppers is clearly finishing the check out process.  The sniper leans forward a little.  I clearly glance their way and take a step forward.  Using my best Die Hard Bruce Willis look, I stare down the primate who is attempting to take the machine for which I have waited.  This normally does the trick and the minion looks away in shame conceding the inevitable.  This is especially true when the sniper is an 84 year old woman. NO WAY she's getting to that station before me. HAHAHAHAHA.... Ahem...

It doesn't always end so successfully for me, though.  Sometimes I am not at the front of the line and I am forced, in prolonged agony, to watch as snipers slip in and steal U-scan machines from we few civilized humans.  They need to be punched.