Saturday, January 10, 2009

I drove into the grocery store parking lot and pulled into a space in the middle of the lot. As I left my car, I heard a woman call out from near one of the lot exits.

"Hello! HELL-O-O-O-O!" she repeated a couple times while looking over at the store, pausing occasionally to futilely push at her full shopping cart which appeared to be immoveable. Our local store uses carts whose wheels lock when someone tries to remove them from the lot, and it looked like hers had locked up when she got too close to the exit.

"HELLOOO!" she cried, still looking over at the store, clearly waiting for a grocery store employee to rescue her. I wandered over.

"Do you need another cart?" I asked her?

"This cart is stuck!" she explained. She was nicely dressed, appeared to be in her late 40s, and was clearly outmatched by her shopping cart.

"Yeah, would you like me to fetch you an unstuck one?"

"Do you work here?" she asked, eying me critically. I was a couple days unshaven and dressed shabbily.

"No, but I am marginally helpful." I replied.

"My cart locked up when I tried to take it out of parking lot," she explained exasperatedly.

"Yeah, that's what they do so that no one steals them." I answered.

She stared at me, completely flummoxed by my answer. "So, how am I supposed to get my groceries to my car across the street?"

"Well, I could help you carry them."

"Really?" she asked. "You'd do that?"

"Sure. It'll be my good deed for the day." I replied.

"Ok, that'd be great. Thank you." she said appreciatively.

"Alright, but keep in mind that this is it. This is my ONE good deed for the day. Once I get this out of the way, I get to be a total jerk for the rest of the day."

"Deal!" she said, agreeeing quickly.

Man, that was so worth it. About 2 minutes of effort and now I have asshole carte-blanche. It's going to be a good day.

4 comments:

Avery Gray said...

Those shopping carts sound pretty ritzy. I'm willing to bet you're paying too much for your tofu.

Mike said...

Oh, don't get me started on the tofu. About once a month Hank asks me to buy tofu for a stir fry or a scramble or a tofu-tini, but she NEVER uses the stuff. So, yes, we pay too much, and then we never use it.

Avery Gray said...

But the option is there, Mike. If you had a sudden hankering for tofu, you'd be in luck, wouldn't you?

Mike said...

Yes, big time. Our run of the mill grocery store has at least 8 different kinds of tofu.