Maybe Two Feet

Let's try this again.

First of all, let's establish that my personal life never enters this space again. I'm a passionate person, and with passion comes some level of ignorance. There's been quite a bit of that from me. When I sit down at a keyboard and force myself to write something, and then I hit a nerve that sends me on a multi-hundred word tirade against the rest of the world, I say things that should be kept to myself. It affects me, it affects my writing. It stops here.

Second of all, there will be "someone else" dropping a few mindgasmic pieces of work on this site. Inigo Rane (I wonder who that could be?) is going to grace/dilute this site with his/my presence. It's a pen name. I thought to myself, "lots of writers have pen names. I should have a pen name" and so it was that I got a pen name.


But now that we've gotten some housekeeping done, let's get to today's "mindgasm" (working on the copyright for that one).


When I go out to "face" the Market Street deli at the end of a shift, I am often flabbergasted by the look of it. I've described before how it looks like an army of midgets has thrown themselves into the side of it (it could be little kids or some other creature under 5 foot tall, but the image is so much more funny if it's midgets), knocking down boxes of deli meats and throwing various cheeses onto the bottom of the knee-knocker (actual term) display.

Today, the third of four straight eight hour work days during Spring Break, I went out and went down the deli wall. I wouldn't have a problem with any of this if it was physically demanding to walk around the store and put something back that you don't want, say if you had a sprained/broken/otherwise torn apart [insert lower body part here].

I'm going to step out of the flow for a second and apologize for that very, very poor choice of words, just in the case that some pervert has been secretly following this blog and is in the process of inserting a lower body part where I instructed him to.

So yeah.

If they had some... physical incapability, I could understand them not going across the store to put something back. Now, I don't always know that someone who's decided to put a couple of wrapped up beer-brined pork chops where the Ricotta should be doesn't have a broken leg or sprained ankle or whatnot. I just think I'd see a few more people hopping around on crutches or zipping along in wheelchairs if it happened with that much frequency.

Of course, this is assuming that physically handicapped people don't all shop in supermarkets from 6 in the morning to 4:45 in the afternoon as a group. It's unlikely, but as President Bush said to Dick Cheney after his inauguration, "Anything's possible. Now let's invade Iraq again".

But what irks me enough to say "Are you fucking serious?" out loud in the middle of a supermarket while I'm still working there is when people pick up, let's say, a bag of shredded Mozzarella, think to themselves "Well, do I really need this?", and after some debate (presumably after thwacking themselves with some pocket-sized blunt instrument) they drop the bag of Mozzarella.

Notice that I never mentioned them moving at all, apart from the obvious motion of dropping the bag of Mozzarella. They stand in the same. Fucking. Spot. That they picked the bag of Mozzarella up in, and then instead of taking the two seconds of their life to put it back in the right spot when they decide they don't want it, maybe a foot or two away from where their hand is at any given time during the process, they drop it in some random place for some eight-dollar-an-hour part timer to pick up after eight hours of work.

I understand that I'm being paid to do it, and considering that I am getting paid to do something as easy as that I should be kind of grateful, but the fact that this problem even exists and that there is even a need for that part of my job description is just kind of irritating. I've been told that I did the same thing before I worked at a supermarket, but I'd like to think I'm not that lazy.

I was also asked today, by someone who looked like he thought the world was made of fur and technicolor rainbows (which is a round-about way of saying "high as a motherfucking kite"), if I knew where the cheese section was. Nevermind the fact that this guy clearly thought that asking this question was one of the steps towards enlightenment, but the words "dairy" are right above this big, yellow section of cheese and other dairy products in big block letters maybe a hundred feet away from where he was standing. I always thought that cheese's membership in the Things Categorized As 'Dairy' Association (or TCADA) was pretty common knowledge. This guy had glasses on too. I always thought the purpose of glasses were to fix eyesight. Clearly that was lost on this guy's brain.

As it turns out, whatever "I always thought" in relation to supermarkets is oftentimes dead wrong.

Watch out for Inigo. He's got something for you tomorrow.


My name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to die.