The Line

"Okay, I'm done. Let's get out of here."

Mark's famous last shopping words. It lifts my spirits to hear, so I look over to the checkout lines. Five cashiers, short to no lines, perfect timing.

"Wait here..." Mark tells me, "I have to go get one more thing."

Aaaaaaargh! The very predictable, I need one more thing, line from Mark. Every damn week he does this to me. I would go get in line to check out, but I've been here before. He never gets back in time and it is embarrassing. So I wait just outside the checkout area. I wait, and I wait as more and more shoppers roll on up to the cashiers and long lines form. Finally Mark arrives.

"Okay, there's a short line down there. Follow me, Mark."

We rush down to the short line and as I start putting our purchases on the counter, the cashier snaps at me.

"This is the Express Lane sir. Fifteen items or less."

Sonofabitch. So I return our stuff to the cart and look for another line. Ah, ha. Two cashiers down is the shortest, so I wrangle our cart and Mark over there. The lady in front of us has only about twenty things in her cart, the guy ahead of her has what looks like even fewer things. But no, something is wrong. The manager is at the end of the counter. He's grabbing things off the counter next to us and putting them on our counter. Thing after thing, moved over to our counter. The computer on the next lane has crashed and now we have to wait while they move everything over. Sonofabitch. I look around. All the other lanes now have long lines, so we stay. If only Mark didn't need that 'one last thing'. Finally the manager has all the groceries from the other lane moved over and the man who is purchasing them sticks his card into the little keypad. The cashier stops scanning items and looks up.

"I'm sorry sir, but you can't pay for this item with an EBT card."

Another snag. A long conversation ensues. I look over and in every other line, the people who were two or three back from us are now getting their items bagged and are leaving. Meanwhile, we haven't moved an inch. I don't know why, but I am the worst judge of checkout lines ever.