Sunday, March 27, 2005
(5:22 PM) | F. Winston Codpiece III:
Review: The Guy in Front of Me in Line at the Grocery Store
This is taking my series of reviews in a somewhat different direction than Mr. Kotsko initially proposed, but I feel it is both necessary and prudent to subject the behavior of the guy in front of me in line at the grocery store to a thorough review and critique. First, his dress and appearance: I know that a trip to the grocery store is generally a casual affair, but it is not the same as a trip to one's basement. Here we are dealing with a genuine worst-case scenario: black jeans, thoroughly worn, untied tennis shoes, and a faded "Big Dog" t-shirt from 1987, complemented by a tattered Charlotte Hornets cap and a hooded sweater -- tied at the waist! His patchy facial hair had been stretched to its limits to fashion a make-shift goatee, together with a peach-fuzz mustache. Things only got worse as he loaded his groceries onto the conveyer belt. Not only was the food itself in horrible taste -- just for example, two boxed sets of Ramen noodle packets (worse yet: Top brand, not the classier Manchuran), Mexican-style cardboard pizzas, Hot Pockets, Wonder Bread, a jumbo jar of jalapeño peppers, frozen chicken strips, frozen breaded mushrooms, frozen steak fries, frozen French toast breakfast combos (!), a dozen and a half eggs, together with, hilariously enough, a box of condoms -- but all of his food was loaded in the most haphazard way imaginable, so as to make an intelligent bagging scheme all but impossible. (And indeed, I counted ten bags for an order that could easily have fit in six had the items been laid out appropriately.)Once he had unloaded his cart, he proceeded to the credit card swiper and pulled out a debit card. At this point, it seems appropriate to insert a brief excursus on the debit card. The fact that people would ever use such a financial instrument boggles the mind. Without even the token security measure of a signature, the debit card allows direct and unmediated access to one's actual bank account. Certainly it keeps one out of the trap of "spending money you don't have," but it exposes one to the trap of "not having money you once had." If one would use a credit card, any purchases made by a thief would be absorbed by the credit card company, without ever affecting one's net worth; the same is not true of a bank -- they will not replace the money in one's account until the fraudulence of the charges has been verified. If one does not have the fiscal discipline to use credit cards responsibly, or at a bare minimum, to reserve one card for "convenience" usage (gas, groceries) that one can easily pay off every month, then exposing oneself directly to financial ruin through the use of a debit card seems especially ill-advised. At the very least, go to the ATM and get some cash, so that you are protected by a PIN number!
In any case, back to the main thread of the review: as expected, he had to swipe several times before he realized he was doing it backwards, even persisting in his error as the clerk haltingly tried to explain to him the correct way. Once all items had been scanned, the clerk then had to ask, several times, with increasing volume, "Credit or debit. Credit or debit. Credit or debit. Credit or debit!" The man looked up, startled: "I'm sorry, what?" "Credit or debit." "Oh, credit. No, I mean, debit. Sorry." The bagging was completed as the transaction was authorized -- as easily as it would have been had some terrorist been using his debit card to purchase guns and ammunition -- and I thought the ordeal was over. But no! He had been holding his wallet in hand the entire time, and his card on top of the wallet, so he had to fumble with his over-stuffed wallet (in which he also had to insert his receipt, since one's receipt from the grocery store is something one simply must have on hand at all times!) to find the empty slot for his debit card among his ten credit cards, then he had to fumble with the afore-mentioned hooded sweatshirt in order to gain passage to his back pocket. It took him several tries to successfully insert wallet into pocket, after which he promptly got a shoelace tangled in the wheels of his cart.
In every regard, this man's trip to the grocery store was a failure. In the days after 9/11, when people were engaged in deep soul-searching about "why they hate us," they neglected to cite the only possible explanation: this guy, who was in front of me in line at the grocery store.
SPECIAL BONUS REVIEW: Many of us have been worrying for years that the Dorito's brand is being diluted through the introduction of new flavors every six months. Whereas we previously had the reliable Nacho Cheesier and Cooler Ranch, we now have to contend with Guacamole (soon to be accompanied by some comparative: "More Guacamole," "Guacamolier") and... a lot of other flavors over the years that I can't remember off-hand. In any case, when I opened up my bag of Black Pepper Jack! Doritos, I was understandably skeptical. Do different kinds of cheese really taste distinctly different in their powder form? What is this "Black Pepper" of which they speak? Apparently, it's the kind that normally accompanies salt in our culture's most famous pair of seasonings -- and I don't think they're fooling anyone by using an image of a pepper mill on the bag. However, I was pleasantly surprised: the chips have a zesty, spicy edge, and the cheese is notably different from the normal cheddar flavor. The powder is caked on thick (more in the style of the Nacho Cheesier than the more lightly-dusted Cooler Ranch), and the bag is replete with the dwarf chips that may or may not be nothing but a congeled mass of the flavoring powder itself. All of this, along with the classic "whole bag of Doritos in one sitting" stomach ache we've come to love over the years. In short: a triumph.
