Grocery Cart Quotes

Myrna could spend happy hours browsing bookcases. She felt if she could just get a good look at a person’s bookcase and their grocery cart, she’d pretty much know who they were.

A Poem By Max White is the color of little bunnies with pink noses. White is the color of fluffy clouds fluffing their way across the sky. White is the color of angel's wings and Angel's wings. White is the color of brand-new ankle socks fresh out of the bag. White is the color of crisp sheets in schmancy hotels. White is the color of every last freaking, gol-danged thing you see for endless miles and miles if you happen to be in Antarctica trying to save the world, which now you aren't so sure you can do because you feel like if you see any more whiteness-Wonder Bread, someone's underwear, teeth-you will completely and totally lose your ever-lovin' mind and wind up pushing a grocery cart full of empty cans around New York City, muttering to yourself. That was my first poem ever. Okay, so it's not Shakespeare, but I liked it.

There’s an organic grocery store just off the highway exit. I can’t remember the last time I went shopping for food.” A smile glittered in his eyes. “I might have gone overboard.” I walked into the kitchen, with gleaming stainless-steel appliances, black granite countertops, and walnut cabinetry. Very masculine, very sleek. I went for the fridge first. Water bottles, spinach and arugula, mushrooms, gingerroot, Gorgonzola and feta cheeses, natural peanut butter, and milk on one side. Hot dogs, cold cuts, Coke, chocolate pudding cups, and canned whipped cream on the other. I tried to picture Patch pushing a shopping cart down the aisle, tossing in food as it pleased him. It was all I could do to keep a straight face.

Simon shook his head."Look,do you know what you want to eat,or do you just want me to keep pushing this cart up and down aisles because it amuses you?" "That and I'm not really familiar with what they sell in mundane grocery stores.Maryse usually cooks or we order in food."said Jace

Quote: You've got bad eating habits if you use a grocery cart in 7-Eleven okay?

She felt if she could just get a good look at a person’s bookcase and their grocery cart, she’d pretty much know who they were.

A ten-year-old getting high on pills. Foolish children. This is what we’re meant to say: Look at their choices, leading to a life of ruin. But lives are getting lived right now, this hour, down in the dirty cracks between the toothbrushed nighty-nights and the full grocery carts, where those words don’t pertain.

On hurricane days, when most women are filling their grocery carts with bread and milk, Miss Lana loads ours with candy, cakes, and tapered candles. If I die in the storm, I'll drift away in the arms of a sugar coma and candlelight, she always says.

Bicycles, bullock carts, and buses that belched thick, black smoke moved in anarchic streams with the auto rickshaws and cars along the streets. Many of the shops—normally selling everything from groceries to stainless steel cookware to shoes—stood silent behind shutters and honeycomb grilles.

Gran always told me there were three types of people we should avoid at all costs: Someone who doesn’t return their grocery cart to the cart corral. A person whose voice doesn’t change when talking to dogs or babies. Anybody who is rude to the waitstaff at restaurants.

I decide to put love in everything I do from this day forward. With every fold of laundry, every push of the grocery cart, every stir of a pot, and every word spoken, I will emanate love.

I'm getting chocolate. I need you. Come over." She hung up, hoping he would get the message. A binge was coming, get help. Inside the store, she blew past the small plastic shopping baskets not made for heavy lifting, and wheeled the full-sized grocery cart over to the holiday aisle. One of the wheels dragged like a conscience, pulling the cart halfheartedly in the direction of the fresh produce. The other wheels squealed in protest.

I was in the fifth grade the first time I thought about turning thirty. My best friend Darcy and I came across a perpetual calendar in the back of the phone book, where you could look up any date in the future, and by using this little grid, determine what the day of the week would be. So we located our birthdays in the following year, mine in May and hers in September. I got Wednesday, a school night. She got a Friday. A small victory, but typical. Darcy was always the lucky one. Her skin tanned more quickly, her hair feathered more easily, and she didn't need braces. Her moonwalk was superior, as were her cart-wheels and her front handsprings (I couldn't handspring at all). She had a better sticker collection. More Michael Jackson pins. Forenze sweaters in turquoise, red, and peach (my mother allowed me none- said they were too trendy and expensive). And a pair of fifty-dollar Guess jeans with zippers at the ankles (ditto). Darcy had double-pierced ears and a sibling- even if it was just a brother, it was better than being an only child as I was. But at least I was a few months older and she would never quite catch up. That's when I decided to check out my thirtieth birthday- in a year so far away that it sounded like science fiction. It fell on a Sunday, which meant that my dashing husband and I would secure a responsible baby-sitter for our two (possibly three) children on that Saturday evening, dine at a fancy French restaurant with cloth napkins, and stay out past midnight, so technically we would be celebrating on my actual birthday. I would have just won a big case- somehow proven that an innocent man didn't do it. And my husband would toast me: "To Rachel, my beautiful wife, the mother of my chidren and the finest lawyer in Indy." I shared my fantasy with Darcy as we discovered that her thirtieth birthday fell on a Monday. Bummer for her. I watched her purse her lips as she processed this information. "You know, Rachel, who cares what day of the week we turn thirty?" she said, shrugging a smooth, olive shoulder. "We'll be old by then. Birthdays don't matter when you get that old." I thought of my parents, who were in their thirties, and their lackluster approach to their own birthdays. My dad had just given my mom a toaster for her birthday because ours broke the week before. The new one toasted four slices at a time instead of just two. It wasn't much of a gift. But my mom had seemed pleased enough with her new appliance; nowhere did I detect the disappointment that I felt when my Christmas stash didn't quite meet expectations. So Darcy was probably right. Fun stuff like birthdays wouldn't matter as much by the time we reached thirty. The next time I really thought about being thirty was our senior year in high school, when Darcy and I started watching ths show Thirty Something together. It wasn't our favorite- we preferred cheerful sit-coms like Who's the Boss? and Growing Pains- but we watched it anyway. My big problem with Thirty Something was the whiny characters and their depressing issues that they seemed to bring upon themselves. I remember thinking that they should grow up, suck it up. Stop pondering the meaning of life and start making grocery lists. That was back when I thought my teenage years were dragging and my twenties would surealy last forever. Then I reached my twenties. And the early twenties did seem to last forever. When I heard acquaintances a few years older lament the end of their youth, I felt smug, not yet in the danger zone myself. I had plenty of time..

I really wish I was the type of person who owned a Prius and didn’t work fifty hours a week and could spend time in the grocery store reading labels to make sure that there isn’t a drop of gelatin or honey in every single thing I put in my cart at Whole Foods.

Every grocery cart tells a story.

A stack of banged-up grocery carts humped each other in a metal orgy in the far corner of the new Sedano’s parking lot.

how the now-ubiquitous humble shopping cart was invented and adopted eighty years ago. Sylvan Goldman, a grocery store owner from Oklahoma, noticed that when his customers’ baskets became too heavy or too full, people stopped shopping. Clearly their problem was his problem, too. He began to think of ways to improve the experience for his customers. In 1936 he came up with the idea of a basket carrier on wheels.

At the grocery store that evening, I weave the cart dancingly, lightly, between the aisles. Standing on my tiptoes. Standing on my heels. Sometimes jumping up on the cart, letting it sail with the forward momentum of my body. Letting one foot dangle off the edge. So fun. I say hello to all the shoppers I pass.

Silly that a grocery should depress one—nothing in it but trifling domestic doings—women buying beans—riding children in those grocery go-carts—higgling about an eighth of a pound more or less of squash—what did they get out of it? Miss Willerton wondered. Where was there any chance for self-expression, for creation, for art? All around her it was the same—sidewalks full of people scurrying about with their hands full of little packages and their minds full of little packages—that woman there with the child on the leash, pulling him, jerking him, dragging him away from a window with a jack-o’-lantern in it; she would probably be pulling and jerking him the rest of her life. And there was another, dropping a shopping bag all over the street, and another wiping a child’s nose, and up the street an old woman was coming with three grandchildren jumping all over her, and behind them was a couple walking too close for refinement.

Nurses are natural kleptos. You don't want to be in a roon without enough supplies, so every time you walk past the med-cart you pocket another saline flush. By the end of the shift you can look like a chipmunk if you're not careful. Some days it's hard to remember that the gum at the end of the grocery aisle isn't there just for you.

I once watched a crowd of people wearing nothing but Speedos and Santa hats jog down Boylston in the middle of winter. I met a guy who could play the harmonica with his nose, a drum set with his feet, a guitar with his hands, and a xylophone with his butt all at the same time. I knew a woman who’d adopted a grocery cart and named it Clarence. Then there was the dude who claimed to be from Alpha Centauri and had philosophical conversations with Canada geese.

Their fellow Pennsylvanians knew nothing about the shattered shtetls and destroyed synagogues of the old country; they had not set eyes on the stunned elderly immigrants starving in tenements in New York, the old ones who came alone, who spoke Yiddish only, whose children died or left them to live in charity homes, the women frightened until the end, the men consigned to a life of selling vegetables and fruits on horse-drawn carts. They were a lost nation spread across the American countryside, bewildered, their yeshiva education useless, their proud history ignored, as the clankety-clank of American industry churned around them, their proud past as watchmakers and tailors, scholars and historians, musicians and artists, gone, wasted. Americans cared about money.

Louisiana stood up again. She was holding Bunny close to her chest. She faced forward. 'Go faster,' she said. 'Are you kidding?' said Beverly. 'Who do you think you are? Some kind of queen? We're pushing as hard as we can. This grocery cart is worthless. It's like the wheels aren't even wheels. It's like they're squares or something.

It’s like the mom who told the little kid to sit down in the grocery cart at the supermarket. He kept standing up and she kept telling him to sit down. Finally she reprimanded him firmly enough that he sat down. She heard him whisper to himself as he was scrambling down, “I may be sitting down on the outside, but I’m standing up on the inside!” When

Along the way, there were minor tweaks. Sylvan Goldman, an Oklahoma City grocer, introduced the shopping cart in 1937.

You may use a shopping cart to get your groceries, but I just use regular clothes. That way all my items are FREE.

I wanna have a full cart of groceries, and I wanna say to the guy in front of me with only two items: 'Mind if I go ahead of you?

I don’t mean to interrupt your gossip free-for-all, but do you know if there’s a non-GMO or organic section in this grocery store? This New York skank has some standards.” Two faces pale, as expected when caught in the middle of an epic gossip session, but the brassy blonde straightens her shoulders. “You’ll probably want to go back to New York for that. Here we just have normal-people food and none of that fancy crap.” “I’m not leaving anytime soon, so I guess I’ll have to ask Logan to help me find what I need.” All their eyes widen at the mention of his name. “It sounds like he already found what you needed,” the blonde says in a snotty tone. “My G-spot, my clit, and the back of my throat? Absolutely.” With a smile, I turn my cart around and push it in the opposite direction.

Playing grocery store is actually better for brain development than a math work sheet with cartoon shopping carts? It has to be some kind of trick. Yet after decades of research, the benefits of play are so thoroughgoing, so dispositive, so well described that the only remaining question is how so many sensible adults sat by and allowed the building blocks of development to become so diminished.

I’m happily married, but supposedly the grocery store is a great place for singles to meet. I’m not sure how this works. “I see you got the Charmin there in your cart. It really is more absorbent. Wanna grab a cup of coffee?

Each moment fully perceived contains eternity. With intuition, trust increases, both in yourself and others. You can see the good reasons for why things happen. You experience less anxiety-producing hopelessness and hopefulness about the past and the future and a more acute awareness of your surroundings. There’s more synchronicity. Inspiration increases. Enthusiasm expands, because when things flow, you feel happy. When you’re happy, creativity and productivity soar and satisfaction becomes profound. For instance, you rush frantically to the grocery store to do the weekly shopping, squeezing in the errand between work, time with your children, and repairs on the house. You could make the experience entertaining and magical if you pay attention to the smells, shapes, and colors of the foods and packages and the emotional tones of the people you meet in the aisles. You might enjoy the smooth motion of your grocery cart or notice exactly which piece of fruit your body wants to select.

It's so funny because I haven't set foot in a grocery store in years, you know. And that's so embarrassing...I kept going, 'What's this?' "First of all I had the cart and I was riding down the aisles standing on it. And there's nobody there but us. And we got in the checkout. And I'm seeing this square thing, and I'm like, "What's this you guys?" And Missy just looked at me. And they said, "That's so you can use your credit card." And I said, "You can use your credit cards in grocery stores now?

Sixty dollars later Jeevan was alone outside his brother’s apartment door, the carts lined up down the corridor. Perhaps, he thought, he should have called ahead from the grocery store. It was one a.m. on a Thursday night, the corridor all closed doors and silence. “Jeevan,” Frank said when he came to the door. “An unexpected pleasure.” “I…” Jeevan didn’t know how to explain himself, so he stepped back and gestured weakly at the carts instead of speaking. Frank manoeuvred his wheelchair forward and peered down the hall. “I see you went shopping,” Frank said.

Without much discussion, we have created a two-tier justice system. If you shoplift at the grocery store, you can be carted off to jail. But if you steal tens of millions of dollars from the tax authorities or fraudulently peddle dangerous drugs from a corporate suite, you’ll be hailed for your business savvy.

A ten-year-old getting high on pills. Foolish children. This is what we’re meant to say: Look at their choices, leading to a life of ruin. But lives are getting lived right now, this hour, down in the dirty cracks between the toothbrushed nighty-nights and the full grocery carts, where those words don’t pertain. Children, choices. Ruin, that was the labor and materials we were given to work with. An older boy that never knew safety himself, trying to make us feel safe. We had the moon in the window to smile on us for a minute and tell us the world was ours. Because all the adults had gone off somewhere and left everything in our hands.

In grocery stores, it takes all of my attention to successfully navigate my cart without running into people, while also making decisions and dealing with all the audio and visual information. It’s hard to do all that and also make eye contact and smile at people, so my default demeanor could easily be perceived as rude.

Be an epic goofball. Seriously. Praise be to Pokemon Go for getting people out and doing stuff again. For about five minutes, Pokemon Go was beating out porn in internet usage. That’s crazy awesome. Who knows what the fuck the new hot thing will be by the time you are reading this book, but I am all in for anything that gives us permission to be epic goofballs. I will talk in a crazy accent, wear weird t-shirts (I love buying t-shirts from the boys’ section of the store) to work (the benefit of being self-employed… I set the dress code), dance with my waiter in the middle of the restaurant (thanks, Paul!), and have my husband (a deeply patient man) push me through the grocery store parking lot while I stand on the shopping cart.

Bricks could be used to make a billion dollars. It’s easy! All you need to do is fill up a shopping cart full of bricks, park it outside of a grocery store, and wait for the coming hyperinflation. Then, when some soccer mom walks by with a shopping cart full of cash, to purchase a loaf of bread, you trade your tangible assets for her imaginary money and boom! you are now a billionaire.


I started thinking about how many contented, happy people there are in actual fact! What an oppressive force! Think about this life of ours: the insolence and idleness of the strong, the ignorance and bestiality of the weak, unbelievable poverty everywhere, overcrowding, degeneracy, drunkenness, hypocrisy, deceit... Meanwhile all is quiet and peaceful in people's homes and outside on the street; out of the fifty thousand people who live in the town, there is not one single person prepared to shout out about it or kick up a fuss. We see the people who go to the market for their groceries, travelling about in the daytime, sleeping at night, the kind of people who spout nonsense, get married, grow old, and dutifully cart their dead off to the cemetery; but we do not see or hear those who are suffering, and all the terrible things in life happen somewhere offstage. Everything is quiet and peaceful, and the only protest is voiced by dumb statistics: so many people have gone mad, so many bottles of vodka have been drunk, so many children have died from malnutrition... And this arrangement is clearly necessary: it's obvious that the contented person only feels good because those who are unhappy bear their burden in silence; without that silence happiness would be inconceivable. It's a collective hypnosis. There ought to be someone with a little hammer outside the door of every contented, happy person, constantly tapping away to remind him that there are unhappy people in the world, and that however happy he may be, sooner or later life will show its claws; misfortune will strike - illness, poverty, loss - and no one will be there to see or hear it, just as they now cannot see or hear others. But there is no person with a little hammer; happy people are wrapped up in their own lives, and the minor problems of life affect them only slightly, like aspen leaves in a breeze, and everything is just fine.

Everyone around you is just doing their best to make it through today. Because tomorrow will come, and you have to repeat the same day over and over again.  As a kid, you go into the grocery store, and it feels like a never-ending castle filled with different rooms. You feel like every time you enter, there’s always something new to discover. But as an adult, you’ll start to get mad when they change the aisles around because now you can't find the damn oranges!  I never imagined that I would one day be employed in the magical grocery store my family and I went to every Saturday. I never imagined that the place I swore I’d never end up, would soon become the place where I was stuck. Emotionally and physically. As I watch customers trickle in and out, I create stories for each of them. The guy holding flowers and staring at his watch is probably late for a date. The young woman reading the get well soon greeting cards might have had someone close to her get hurt—or maybe they're sick.  All the stories I create for these people make me happy. They’re out in the world. They’re living whereas I’m only existing. I have nobody to share my oranges with. I have nobody to blow out candles in front of. I’m directionless and alone. This big magical place I once thought of is now holding me hostage. I had love once. I had people around me once. I had someone to grocery shop with on the weekends and laugh with when our groceries dropped through the bag. I once had someone to argue with over who was allowed to push the cart. I once had someone who would peel my oranges for me when we got home. Now, my oranges sit and rot in the bowl on my small kitchen table. I have to throw them away most of the time. Yet, I still buy them because it reminds me of something I once had. Is that all life is?

The bus’s wipers slapped out of synch, like poorly rehearsed ballroom dancers, arms of a neophyte swimmer dogpaddling, wobbling grocery-cart wheel and its unencumbered mate.

You need to include foods in your diet that are as close to natural as possible. If something has a whole list of ingredients that you cannot pronounce, it should not make it into your shopping cart.

Do you ever run into the grocery store for two or three things, and walk out with twenty? Somewhere between the milk and bananas, you discover a cartful of things you didn’t realize you “needed!” Supermarkets are designed to promote impulse buying. High-margin, brightly packaged items are cleverly displayed to catch your eye and empty your wallet. Avoid the temptation by making a shopping list at home, and sticking to it when you get to the store. Instead

Nicholas wrestled a grocery cart free from the queue and pushed it into the produce section at Publix. “They make really good subs here,” I said.

I taste the idea of grocery shopping without strangers taking food they disapprove of out of my cart or offering me unsolicited nutrition advice.

Other stores put closeout or discontinued items on a shelf or cart in the back of the store.

He was twenty-eight years old with no family or partner to help make ends meet, and certainly no savings to allow him to pursue higher education in hope of finding a better career. When he wasn’t unclogging toilets and mopping up spills, he worked at a local tech-support call center. He delivered flyers. He bagged groceries and retrieved wayward carts and cleaned yet more spills at the local grocery store closest to his one-bedroom apartment in a neighborhood that shouldn’t cost as much to live in as it did. And it still wasn’t enough. Still Hero struggled to pay all his bills and afford the little luxuries of life like food and clothing and deeply necessary medication.

I tried to examine my anxiety as if it were an item at the grocery cart. To read its label: a negative feeling that you don’t need. Put that package back on the shelf and breathe.

Anxiety is a serious and sometimes debilitating mental health issue that affects millions of people worldwide, but when you’re, say, trying to explain to another person who has not fallen down the spiral staircase of your worst thoughts why exactly you’re unable to walk through a grocery store without imagining every single can, shelf, and cart rotting in a future landfill, poisoning our soil and returning as radioactive carrots and kale, you have to admit that it’s also… a little embarrassing.

Why, for instance, were we going to the grocery store en famille, when it made Tom tense and Sylvie antsy? As I mentioned earlier, I happen to love grocery shopping—so now if I need to do it on the weekends, Tom drops me off and takes Sylvie to a nearby park. They kick a soccer ball around while I obsessively inspect every new granola flavor (“Ooh, coffee–dark chocolate–hazelnut? Into the cart it goes!”). Doo-de-doo. I text Tom when I’m done and they help load the car.

Moshe had few friends. Most of Pottstown’s Jews had left Chicken Hill by then. Nate was a friend, but he was a Negro, so there was that space between them. But with Malachi, there was no space. They were fellow escapees who, having endured the landing at Ellis Island and escaped the grinding sweatshops and vicious crime of the vermin-infested Lower East Side, had arrived by hook or crook in the land of opportunity that was Pennsylvania, home to Quakers, Mormons, and Presbyterians. Who cared that life was lonely, that jobs were thankless drudgery, that the romance of the proud American state was myth, that the rules of life were laid carefully in neat books and laws written by stern Europeans who stalked the town and state like the grim reaper, with their righteous churches spouting that Jews murdered their precious Jesus Christ? Their fellow Pennsylvanians knew nothing about the shattered shtetls and destroyed synagogues of the old country; they had not set eyes on the stunned elderly immigrants starving in tenements in New York, the old ones who came alone, who spoke Yiddish only, whose children died or left them to live in charity homes, the women frightened until the end, the men consigned to a life of selling vegetables and fruits on horse-drawn carts. They were a lost nation spread across the American countryside, bewildered, their yeshiva education useless, their proud history ignored, as the clankety-clank of American industry churned around them, their proud past as watchmakers and tailors, scholars and historians, musicians and artists, gone, wasted. Americans cared about money. And power. And government. Jews had none of those things; their job was to tread lightly in the land of milk and honey and be thankful that they were free to walk the land without getting their duffs kicked—or worse. Life in America was hard, but it was free, and if you worked hard, you might gain some opportunity, maybe even open a shop or business of some kind.

Their fellow Pennsylvanians knew nothing about the shattered shtetls and destroyed synagogues of the old country; they had not set eyes on the stunned elderly immigrants starving in tenements in New York, the old ones who came alone, who spoke Yiddish only, whose children died or left them to live in charity homes, the women frightened until the end, the men consigned to a life of selling vegetables and fruits on horse-drawn carts. They were a lost nation spread across the American countryside, bewildered, their yeshiva education useless, their proud history ignored, as the clankety-clank of American industry churned around them, their proud past as watchmakers and tailors, scholars and historians, musicians and artists, gone, wasted. Americans cared about money. And power. And government. Jews had none of those things;

Letters of the alphabet are the base of reading and writing. It is through letters that form words. For your children to learn the alphabet, you can buy educational books geared for this purpose. My book the grocery cart of spring writing abc is very affordable and helpful when it comes to teaching. Train an hour a day, until they learn slowly and learn to differentiate one letter from another. Repetition and association are the keys to learning fast.

The easiest and full of fun way to teach your children alphabet!!. Introducing "The Grocery Cart Spree Writing ABCs" story book by Doris Hankamer.

A dumb electric meter adds up all of the kWh used over the course of a month regardless of when that power was made and how much it cost to make. Some homes use a lot of power during the expensive mid-day period, while others use most of their power at night. If those two homes used the same monthly total number of kWh, and they had a dumb meter, the power company has to charge them the same amount for monthly service because it doesn’t know when each house was using power. An executive I know likens this to weighing your grocery cart when you check out at the supermarket and charging you per pound of groceries in the cart, without prices for any of the specific items you chose to buy that day, whether it be caviar or pet food.

A pair of waiters brought a feast to the hotel room and arranged it in the sitting area. They unfolded the hot cart into a table, draped it in white linen, and brought out silver-domed plates. By the time the wine was poured and all the dishes were uncovered, I was trembling with hunger. Luke, however, became fractious after I changed his diaper, and he howled every time I tried to set him down. Holding him against one shoulder, I contemplated the steaming grilled steak in front of me and wondered how I was going to manage with only one hand. “Let me,” Jack murmured, and came to my side of the table. He cut the steak into small, neat bites with such adroitness that I gave him a look of mock-alarm. “You certainly know how to handle a knife.” “I hunt whenever I get the chance.” Finishing the task, Jack set down the utensils and tucked a napkin into the neckline of my shirt. His knuckles brushed my skin, eliciting a shiver. “I can field-dress a deer in fifteen minutes,” he told me. “That’s impressive. Disgusting, but impressive.” He gave me an unrepentant grin as he returned to his side of the table. “If it makes you feel better, I eat anything I catch or kill.” “Thanks, but that doesn’t make me feel better in the least. Oh, I’m aware that meat doesn’t magically appear all nicely packaged in foam and cellophane at the grocery store. But I have to stay several steps removed from the process. I don’t think I could eat meat if I had to hunt the animal and . . .” “Skin and gut it?” “Yes. Let’s not talk about that right now.” I took a bite of the steak. Either it was the long period of deprivation, or the quality of the beef, or the skill of the chef . . . but that succulent, lightly smoked, melting-hot steak was the best thing I had ever tasted. I closed my eyes for a moment, my tonsils quivering. He laughed quietly at my expression. “Admit it, Ella. It’s not so bad being a carnivore.” I reached for a chunk of bread and dabbed it in soft yellow butter. “I’m not a carnivore, I’m an opportunistic omnivore.” -Jack & Ella

We continue, however, to need "elephants" in order for us to use Berkshire’s flood of incoming cash. Charlie and I must therefore ignore the pursuit of mice and focus our acquisition efforts on much bigger game. Our exemplar is the older man who crashed his grocery cart into that of a much younger fellow while both were shopping. The elderly man explained apologetically that he had lost track of his wife and was preoccupied searching for her. His new acquaintance said that by coincidence his wife had also wandered off and suggested that it might be more efficient if they jointly looked for the two women. Agreeing, the older man asked his new companion what his wife looked like. ‘She’s a gorgeous blonde,’ the fellow answered, ‘with a body that would cause a bishop to go through a stained glass window, and she’s wearing tight white shorts. How about yours?’ The senior citizen wasted no words: ‘Forget her, we’ll look for yours.

Now, it's fair to say, the majority of us don't want to be farmers, see farmers, pay farmers, or hear their complaints. Except as straw-chewing figures in children's books, we don't quite believe in them anymore. When we give it a thought, we mostly consider the food industry to be a thing rather than a person. We obligingly give 85 cents of our every food dollar to that thing, too--the processors, marketers, and transporters. And we complain about the high price of organic meats and vegetables thtat might send back more than three nickels per buck to the farmers: those actual humans putting seeds into the ground, harvesting, attending livestock births, standing in the fields at dawn casting their shadows upon our sustenance. There seems to be some reason we don't want to compensate or think about these hardworking people. In the grocery store checkout corral, we're more likely to learn which TV stars are secretly fornicating than to inquire as to the whereabouts of the people who grew the cucumbers and melons in our carts.

Hi, there.  Need a hand?” the man said. I stopped near the trunk. “No, thanks.  I got it.” He didn’t leave. “My name’s Dale.  I own Dale’s Auto Body on South Mitchell.  You should bring your car by.  It looks like it might be due for an oil change.” Did I really look dumb enough to believe he could determine the car needed an oil change just by looking at the exterior?  It certainly wasn’t leaking oil as a giveaway. “That’s a nice offer, but my boyfriend does the oil changes.”  I unlocked the trunk and started to load groceries. Dale didn’t take the hint and go away. “He’s a handy guy, then?”  He grabbed the potatoes and set them in the trunk for me.  Unfortunately, it brought him closer. “Yes, very.”  A brief conversation sometimes worked to get rid of a pest. “I’m sorry, I didn’t catch your name,” he said. I could see Clay through the back window.  Crouched down, he watched the man though the small gap between the trunk lid and the trunk.  I bent forward and set a bag in the trunk so Dale wouldn’t see me as I rolled my eyes at Clay.  Clay’s gaze briefly flicked to me before returning to Dale with serious intent. “Gabby,” I said as I closed the trunk.  “Thanks for helping me with the groceries, but I need to get going.  My dog’s been in the car for a while already.” Not waiting for his reply, I moved the cart to the empty spot next to my car. “We have an opening at the shop.  If your boyfriend’s looking for work, send him by.  We’ll see how good he is,” Dale said, opening the driver-side door for me. Clay hopped from the back seat to the driver’s seat.  With bristling fur, he growled at Dale, who backed away a step. I nodded to Dale and nudged Clay over so I could slide in behind the wheel.  Braving Clay’s wrath, Dale closed the door for me.  I started the car and pulled through the empty spot in front of me. “Well, that was a challenge if I ever heard one.”  I reached over to pet Clay’s head.  “But no challenges until you fix the sink.”  He looked up at me, and I smiled. When

He Said EYE-RACK Relative to our plans for your country, we will blast your tree, crush your cart, stun your grocery. Amen sisters and brothers, give us your sesame legs, your satchels, your skies. Freedom will feel good to you too. Please acknowledge our higher purpose. Now, we did not see your bed of parsley. On St. Patrick's Day 2003, President Bush wore a blue tie. Blinking hard he said, "reckless aggression." He said, "the danger is clear." Your patio was not visible in his frame. Your comforter stuffed with wool from a sheep you knew. He said, "We are against the lawless men who rule your country, not you." Tell that to the mother, the sister, the bride, the proud boy, the peanut-seller, the librarian careful with her shelves. The teacher, the spinner, the sweeper, the invisible village, the thousands of people with laundry and bread, the ants tunneling through the dirt.

Daddy? Daddy, I know the baby is in the mommy’s tummy and the baby comes out of the mommy’s tummy, but, Daddy? How do that baby get in the mommy’s tummy?” He stopped dead in his tracks in the parking lot, his daughter in the rider seat of the shopping cart, his bagged groceries in the cart, and stared at her dumbly. Time stopped. He tried to channel Franci, who seemed to do all this parent stuff with such ease, but nothing came. “Daddy?” she asked. He smiled with what he hoped was confidence, pinched her little chin and said, “After you have Stroganoff and peas tonight, would you like chocolate or vanilla ice cream?” “Chocolate!” she yelled. “Whipped cream and a cherry?” “Whip cream and a cherry!” she yelled. “That’s what I thought. No chicken and broccoli for you tonight. No, sir. You’re having fun food! Daddy’s Stroganoff and ice cream!” “Yay!” she yelled. Later

My mind: a thousand hungry daughters, my harlot heritage. Marbles: lost, no rescue search. Your heart: blooming thorns, and a stolen grocery cart.

smile. “But as your friend, I strongly recommend you change into something that doesn’t suggest you have a grocery cart of aluminum cans parked next to a cardboard box in a nearby alley. Whatever you decide, I’ll be right here.” He patted the arm of the chair. “And you’ve got twenty minutes.” Before I could open my

And I need at least one dog walking along beside me, even better, two, as I push my grocery cart east, across town, and then back. Without a dog or two beside me, I feel incomplete. I catch myself talking to one or the other even if they’re not there and then feel like an idiot.

Foolish children. This is what we’re meant to say: Look at their choices, leading to a life of ruin. But lives are getting lived right now, this hour, down in the dirty cracks between the toothbrushed nighty-nights and the full grocery carts, where those words don’t pertain. Children, choices. Ruin, that was the labor and materials we were given to work with. An older boy that never knew safety himself, trying to make us feel safe. We had the moon in the window to smile on us for a minute and tell us the world was ours. Because all the adults had gone off somewhere and left everything in our hands.

Even though it’s easy to fall back into a routine and keep himself busy, he still misses him. It hits him at the most inopportune moments, like when he’s grocery shopping for the Woods and gets stupidly emotional just putting bananas in the cart, or the day he does laundry and finds the cross country t-shirt Harry was wearing the first day they met, mixed in with all of Louis’ clothes. He casts a cursory glance around the laundry room and then takes a whiff of the collar, hoping for a whiff of something he can no longer smell.

A woman is not a receptacle. My mother said that tonight. She said a woman is not a safety deposit box, not a safe you keep your stuff in. She is not a grocery cart. When you put the key back in, a quarter doesn’t pop out.

Honesty. The word was so simple for other people. But Jacob had never been a rabbi’s daughter. He had never experienced the ups and downs of a religious communal life. The way congregants gossiped, tallying up a scorecard of Shabbat dinners and sermons before negotiating your father’s contract. The way women peered into your mother’s shopping cart at the grocery store, checking on the hechsher of her items. There were rules to being a rabbinic family. There were expectations. Rachel had not met any of them. She wanted to be courageous. Speak the words that for too long had been sitting upon her heart. But Rachel loved her parents. She loved her sometimes dysfunctional but always openhearted Jewish community. What Jacob didn’t understand—because he relied on no one and therefore had no one to answer to—was that truth had consequences. Even for love, Rachel wasn’t prepared to face them.

I committed to acting on the Word from that point forward. As I did, peculiarities began to follow me. After the second sermon, I decided to stop by the grocery store on my way home from the gym to practice my skills with time management and to avoid procrastination. I entered the grocery store unprepared, with no goal other than to be obedient to Shiligoth’s wish to act upon the sermons. Because I was not prepared to shop for groceries, I did not know what I wanted to buy. As I entered the store, the Spirit of Shiligoth entered me again to guide my footsteps. I had faith that Shiligoth would guide me in my dealings. I entered the milk aisle and began to select groceries. My hands were full and I did not have a cart. I prayed that Shiligoth would provide me with a cart. As I did so, an empty cart materialized in the aisle in front of me. I dropped to a knee and shook my head in disbelief. I stood up and looked again. The cart was real. Shiligoth had answered my obscure prayer as a thank you for my obedience. I was witnessing synchronicity in action, the unity of mind, body and soul. I had caught a glimpse of the prophetic life and I wanted more.

Let’s face it: we judge. We all do. It’s part of our humanity. We might never say anything aloud, but we judge, or at the least, we wish others would be different or act differently. Admit it: when you’re at the grocery store, are you secretly looking at someone else’s cart and thinking, Ooh, don’t you know diet soda will kill you? Gosh, that’s loaded with carbs. When you experience or observe behavior you don’t like, Pause and Think by asking yourself: Is this in my control? Is this any of my business? When it’s not your business and/or not in your control, you need to Act by practicing Flexibility.

WHEN THE TEMP AGENCY CALLED, I WAS STRUGGLING TO MAKE the math work. In one window, I was logged in to my checking account; in the other, I was whittling down my grocery delivery shopping cart into something that would fit into the sliver of overdraft I had available. I kept dragging different configurations of noodles and vegetables in and out of the cart, grimly trying to ward off scurvy until one of several outstanding invoices was paid.

Companies don't want anyone telling them how to deal with their workers  -- they never have; they never will. Stores don't want anyone telling them how to design their entrances; how many steps they can have (or can't have); how heavy their doors can be. Yet they accept their city's building and fire codes, dictating to them how many people they can have in their restaurants, based on square footage, so that the place will not be a fire hazard. They accept that the city can inspect their electrical wiring to ensure that it "meets code" before they open for business. Yet they chafe if an individual wants an accommodation. Because, it seems, it is seen as "special for the handicapped," most of whom likely don't deserve it. Accommodation is fought doubly hard when it is seen to be a way of letting "the disabled" have a part of what we believe is for "normal" people. Although no access code, anywhere, requires them, automatic doors remain the one thing, besides flat or ramped entrances, that one hears about most from people with mobility problems: they need automatic doors as well as flat entrances. Yet no code, anywhere, includes them; mandating them would be "going too far"; giving the disabled more than they have a right to. A ramp is OK. An automatic door? That isn't reasonable. At least that's what the building lobby says. Few disability rights groups, anywhere, have tried to push for that accommodation. Some wheelchair activists are now pressing for "basic, minimal access" in all new single-family housing, so, they say, they can visit friends and attend gatherings in others' homes. This means at least one flat entrance and a bathroom they can get into. De-medicalization No large grocery or hotel firm, no home-and-garden discount supply center would consider designing an entrance that did not include automatic doors. They are standard in hotels and discount warehouses. Not, of course, for the people who literally can not open doors by themselves  -- for such people are "the disabled": them, not us. Firms that operate hotels, groceries and building supply stores fight regulations that require they accommodate "the disabled." Automatic doors that go in uncomplainingly are meant for us, the fit, the nondisabled, to ensure that we will continue to shop at the grocery or building supply center; to make it easy for us to get our grocery carts out, our lumber dollies to our truck loaded with Sheetrock for the weekend project. So the bellhops can get the luggage in and out of the hotel easily. When it is for "them," it is resisted; when it is for "us," however, it is seen as a design improvement. Same item; different purpose

skinny middle-aged loose-skinned white ladies with their yoga pants and their Chinese babies in their grocery carts.

I tried breathing like a yogi, but who was I kidding. I tried to examine my anxiety as if it were an item at the grocery cart. To read its label: a negative feeling that you don’t need. Put that package back on the shelf and breathe.

Picture a countryside with one hundred million chickens roaming the land. It is challenging to imagine anything of that magnitude. It happens to be the number of cooked rotisserie chickens Costco sells annually. The Chief Financial Officer shared that the retailer loses upwards of US$40 million a year selling the chicken. This is not altruism. People are lured by the five-dollar item but leave with a cart overflowing with bulk underwear, photocopier paper, and lawn ornaments. This practice of selling rotisserie chicken has spread to most grocery chains in North America.

Grocery stores are an exercise in psychological manipulation. It is virtually impossible to enter a supermarket intending to buy a quart of milk and emerge with only the milk. First, consider the entrance. Once you enter the grocery store, you must traverse the entire store in order to reach the checkout line. And where do the entrances to grocery stores usually leave you? In the produce department. You are surrounded by scents, textures, and bright colors that result in a surge of endorphins. The lighting of the store is manipulated to make fruits and vegetables appear at their brightest and best. And of course, the dairy aisle—one of the most popular locations to visit—is always hidden in the back of the store so you are forced to pass through a wealth of tempting products before reaching it. Even the way the shelves are organized is a psychological trap. The most expensive items are always placed conveniently at adult eye level, with the generic brands placed down by your knees. Sugary cereals or other items meant to appeal to children are placed at eye level for children. Even the giant size of the shopping carts is intended to encourage more purchases. “Even the music is meant to manipulate us,” I explain to Luke. “A study of supermarket shoppers found people spend more time shopping when stores play music. You’ll notice there are no windows or clocks or skylights that give you any external time cues.

Yogurt is good for you. And it’s just one spoon,” Sharpcot had replied, but this stack summoned a billion voices, all of them saying in a chorus, “Just one spoon.” From kids’ lunches and store shelves and desk drawers and airline meal packs, in every country of the world: Canada and the United States and Nicaragua and Uruguay and Argentina and Ireland and Burkina Faso and Russia and Papua New Guinea and New Zealand and very probably the Antarctic. Where wasn’t there disposable cutlery? Plastic spoons in endless demand, in endless supply, from factory floors where they are manufactured and packaged in boxes of 10 or 20 or 100 or 1000 or individually in clear wrap, boxed on skids and trucked to trains freighting them to port cities and onto giant container ships plying the seas to international ports to intercity transport trucks to retail delivery docks for grocery stores and retail chains, supplying restaurants and homes, consumers moving them from shelf to cart to bag to car to house, where they are stuck in the lunches of the children of polluting parents, or used once each at a birthday party to serve ice cream to four-year-olds where only some are used but who knows which? So used and unused go together in the trash, or every day one crammed into a hipster’s backpack to eat instant pudding at his software job in an open-concept walkup in a gentrified neighbourhood, or handed out from food trucks by the harbour, or set in a paper cup at a Costco table for customers to sample just one bite of this exotic new flavour, and so they go into trash bins and dumpsters and garbage trucks and finally vast landfill sites or maybe just tossed from the window of a moving car or thrown over the rail of a cruise ship to sink in the ocean deep.

There will be bills to pay right up to the second civilization collapses and money loses all value forever. Then millions of greenbacks won’t be worth as much as a single serving of beans. That’s why you should toss a few extra cans in your cart every time you go to the grocery store. Someday you’ll be the richest person in the world.

At ALDI getting a shopping cart requires a quarter, which you get back after returning it to the stand. If you don't have any change, there is no need to panic! Go to the cashier and ask for a quarter.

In the produce section she stopped to inhale the smell of so many oranges- Valencia, blood, juice, navel- net bags of limes, stacks of pineapples. The hygienic overtones of bleach were also in the air and she sniffed at the scent of chlorine as though it were a delicacy. She picked up a watermelon as big as a child, lifting it with difficulty into her cart. A sheaf of plantains. Peaches thick with fuzz. She chose bottled waters from Maine and Italy, from Germany and France, then proud-colored squeeze bottles of Joy and Cheer, Dove and Palmolive. She reached for high-protein cereals and protein bars, granola with cranberries, Cap'n Crunch. She explored the store, lapping up the light, listening to the music with its brave half-heard songs of love lost and found. Naomi passed by the stacks of mammalian flesh cut into portions wrapped in tight plastic. She lingered at the fish counter to contemplate the blackness of the mussels, the glistening dislocated stripes of the mackerel, the rosy pinkness of the salmon fillets arrayed on the ice. Here were animals still with their eyes on, red snapper and Mediterranean black bass. In a tank of greenish water, lobsters swam with halting deliberation; she pursed her lips and gave a furtive salute, her fingers held like claws.

Jasmine stopped at the entrance of Sutton Place Gourmet and sniffed. Pumpkin. She could smell the gourds from where she stood. A good start. Let's see. She sniffed again. A bit of thyme. Not sage. Thyme. Her brain stretched and shook the cobwebs away. Ummm, pumpkin braised until meltingly soft, mashed with mascarpone and spread between thin layers of fresh pasta... a delicate cream sauce infused with thyme. Would it work? A touch of very, very slowly cooked and mellow garlic. That would be the trick. Dash of nutmeg. Yes. Jasmine was salivating as she pushed her cart toward the vegetable section. Freshly spritzed vegetables lay glistening in brightly colored rows. Cabbage of cobalt blue, fern-green fresh dill, and cut pumpkin the color of riotous caramel. Jasmine rubbed her hands together. Autumn was a favorite season for her. Most cooks preferred spring and summer, yearning for fresh bites of flavor after a dark, heavy winter. The fragrant tomatoes, the bright bursting berries, the new spring vegetables as lively and adorable as new lambs. But Jasmine yearned for the rich tastes of the earth. She was a glutton for root vegetables, simmered in stocks, enriched with butter and dark leafy herbs. She imagined them creamy, melting on her tongue, the nutrients of the rich soil infusing her blood.

What’s an exchange rate? An exchange rate (also known as the nominal exchange rate) represents the relative price of two currencies. For example, the dollar–euro exchange rate implies the relative price of the euro in terms of dollars. If the dollar–euro exchange rate is $0.95, it means that you need $0.95 to buy €1. Therefore, the exchange rate simply states how many units of one currency you need to buy one unit of another currency. Throughout the book, you see the term consumption basket. Basically, think about the content of your shopping cart when you go grocery shopping, such as milk, bread, eggs, and so on. The consumption basket of a country includes goods and services that are bought or consumed by the average person in this country.

America rarely prosecutes white-collar criminals. Even after the 2008 financial crisis, despite widespread illegal conduct that destroyed lives around the country, just one banker went to jail; in contrast, back in the 1980s, almost nine hundred bankers were jailed in the aftermath of the savings and loan scandal. Without much discussion, we have created a two-tier justice system. If you shoplift at the grocery store, you can be carted off to jail. But if you steal tens of millions of dollars from the tax authorities or fraudulently peddle dangerous drugs from a corporate suite, you’ll be hailed for your business savvy.

I am no stranger to dieting. I understand that, in general, to lose weight you need to eat less and move more. I can diet with reasonable success for months at a time. I restrict my calories and keep track of everything I eat. When I first started dieting under my parents’ supervision, I would do this in paper journals. In this modern age, I use an app on my phone. I recognize that, despite what certain weight-loss system commercials would have me believe, I cannot eat everything and anything I want. And that is one of the cruelties of our cultural obsession with weight loss. We’re supposed to restrict our eating while indulging in the fantasy that we can, indeed, indulge. It’s infuriating. When you’re trying to lose weight, you cannot have anything you want. That is, in fact, the whole point. Having anything you want is likely what contributed to your weight gain. Dieting requires deprivation, and it’s easier when everyone faces that truth. When I am dieting, I try to face that truth, but I am not terribly successful. There is always a moment when I am losing weight when I feel better in my body. I breathe easier. I move better. I feel myself getting smaller and stronger. My clothes fall over my body the way they should and then they start to get baggy. I get terrified. I start to worry about my body becoming more vulnerable as it grows smaller. I start to imagine all the ways I could be hurt. I start to remember all the ways I have been hurt. I also taste hope. I taste the idea of having more choices when I go clothes shopping. I taste the idea of fitting into seats at restaurants, movie theaters, waiting rooms. I taste the idea of walking into a crowded room or through a mall without being stared at and pointed at and talked about. I taste the idea of grocery shopping without strangers taking food they disapprove of out of my cart or offering me unsolicited nutrition advice. I taste the idea of being free of the realities of living in an overweight body. I taste the idea of being free. And then I worry that I am getting ahead of myself. I worry that I won’t be able to keep up better eating, more exercise, taking care of myself. Inevitably, I stumble and then I fall, and then I lose the taste of being free. I lose the taste of hope. I am left feeling low, like a failure. I am left feeling ravenously hungry and then I try to satisfy that hunger so I might undo all the progress I’ve made. And then I hunger even more.

She hated grocery shopping more than any other chore. Something about it felt insulting. Probably because it was basically doing the same chore four times. First you moved the groceries into the cart, then onto the checkout belt, then into the car, and finally into the house. Hell, it was really a fifth time if you counted putting everything away once you got to the kitchen.

The nicest building in Patrice’s life was Lena’s Food Market off Fond Du Lac Avenue. It had shopping carts, bright fluorescent lights, and a buffed linoleum floor. Her white friends called it the ghetto grocery store, but it was one of the better markets on the North Side. And at Lena’s, Patrice never felt her existence questioned. She tried not to go to parts of the city where she did. Patrice lived four miles away from the shore of Lake Michigan: an hour on foot, a half hour by bus, fifteen minutes by car. She had never been.

I loved shopping on rue Montorgueil so much that I often carted home more food- slices of spinach and goat cheese tourtes; jars of lavender honey and cherry jam, tiny, wild handpicked strawberries; fraises aux bois- than one person alone could possibly eat. Now at least I had an excuse to fill up my canvas shopping bag. "Doesn't it smell amazing?" I gushed once we had crossed the threshold of my favorite boulangerie. Mom, standing inside the doorway clutching her purse, just nodded as she filled her lungs with the warm, yeasty air, her eyes alight with a brightness I didn't remember from home. With a fresh-from-the-oven baguette in hand, we went to the Italian épicerie, where from the long display of red peppers glistening in olive oil, fresh raviolis dusted in flour, and piles and piles of salumi, soppressata, and saucisson, which we chose some thinly sliced jambon blanc and a mound of creamy mozzarella. At the artisanal bakery, Eric Kayser, we took our time selecting three different cakes from the rows of lemon tarts, chocolate éclairs, and what I was beginning to recognize as the French classics: dazzling gâteaux with names like the Saint-Honoré, Paris-Brest, and Opéra. Voila, just like that, we had dinner and dessert. We headed back to the tree house- those pesky six flights were still there- and prepared for our modest dinner chez-moi. Mom set the table with the chipped white dinner plates and pressed linen napkins. I set out the condiments- Maille Dijon mustard, tart and grainy with multicolored seeds; organic mayo from my local "bio" market; and Nicolas Alziari olive oil in a beautiful blue and yellow tin- and watched them get to it. They sliced open the baguette, the intersection of crisp and chewy, and dressed it with slivers of ham and dollops of mustard. I made a fresh mozzarella sandwich, drizzling it with olive oil and dusting it with salt and pepper.

#23 - Take Immediate Action Many people have difficulty taking action. Reasons vary. Some folks fear failure. Others are disinclined to try new things. Still others are saddled with indecision to the point that they become paralyzed when confronted with multiple options. But making decisions and acting on them quickly can benefit you in several ways. First, you become more committed to the path you choose for yourself. Second, you radiate confidence, an essential trait if you serve in a leadership role. Third, it improves communication; others will realize you’re disinclined to vacillate and respond in a similar manner. Fourth, you accomplish more. These advantages are tough to ignore. If you tend to dither when making decisions and forging ahead, consider developing this habit. It can literally change your life. If you’re unaccustomed to taking immediate action, here’s how I would build this habit… How to start small: Compile a list of tasks you’ve put on the back burner. During Week 1, pick one task from the list each day. Regardless of the reason you put it off (procrastination, a fear of failure, etc.), commit to finishing it before the end of the day. Beginning in Week 2, continue to work through your list of postponed tasks, addressing one per day. In addition, spend 10 minutes per day cleaning up your email inbox. This is a common area of indecision for people. Train yourself to deal with each email decisively. Respond to it, delete it, or archive it. During Week 3, focus on making at least one decision quickly per day. When confronted with multiple options, choose one within 10 seconds. For example, let’s say your spouse asks you which restaurant you’d like to visit for dinner. Instead of spending five minutes considering every local venue, just choose one. Be decisive. Starting in Week 4, look for opportunities to make quick decisions and take immediate action. For example, if you’re presented with more than one set of driving directions, pick one and move on. If you’re at the grocery store and trying to decide between chocolate chip ice cream or Rocky road, choose one and put it in your shopping cart. If you’re trying to decide between two wines for a dinner party, make a fast decision. Give yourself 10 seconds.

The most influential choices you make for your health occur in the grocery store. Once you put something in your cart, good or bad, it is likely to end up in your stomach. Even if you feel some remorse about your poor choice in the store, when you get home, your willpower stands little chance. After all, you paid for it, and it is only a few steps away at that point.

With frantic abandon, John forced his purchases into bags as he waited for the total. “Sir.” John turned to see apron-boy standing behind a central podium that oversaw the self-checkout area. “Yeah?” “The dog food.” John looked to the bottom of the cart and the green bag of dog food that proclaimed to be “now tastier than ever.” He thought for a second about how much he didn’t care if his dog thought the dog food was tastier than ever and then bent down to get the bag. Halfway down he remembered the scanning gun attached to the checkout. Snatching it from its holster, he pointed it at the oversized barcode on the dog food. Beep. “Ha,” he spun the scanning gun like a six-shooter and placed it back in the holster. “Please place item in bagging area.” “Oh you’ve got to be kidding me! There’s no room in the bagging area you stupid piece of…” “Is