checkout lane nightmares.

The great part about grocery shopping is that you control 99% of the experience. What you buy and how fast you buy it is totally in your control. I am not about wandering around the store, looking at all the food, and deciding which I want more, the Kashi with brown sugar, or the Kashi with brown sugar and cinnamon. I like to get in, get out, and get on with my day. Where the experience ceases to be in your control comes at the end of the trip. The worst part of the trip. The part that any sane person dreads.Picking a checkout aisle.You have roughly three choices for checkout lanes these days.1) The self-checkout lane: God help you if you ring up produce in the self-checkout lane. There is a weighing system, and there are eight different types of tomatoes to choose from in the computer. You will end up calling an employee for help, which then has completely negated the point of doing the checkout yourself. If you do manage to get through the self-checkout alone, the next hurdle is getting your groceries bagged before the electronic lady starts ripping you a new one.2) The express lane: 10 items or less. Who honestly goes to a grocery for 10 items or less? I suppose that I've run to Cub Foods for a pint of ice cream and nothing else after a particularly rough day. And maybe if you're nothing like me (read: responsible), you can get by with one big monthly grocery run and smaller weekly runs for things like milk. For those of us that are incapable of that, the express lane might as well not exist.3) The regular lane: This is the tried and true method of paying for your groceries. You unload your cart onto the conveyor belt, you let the employee swipe all your food, you pay, you pack and you leave. That sounds smooth, right? That's because it is. The problem with the regular lane is not the process. The problem is that grocery shopper in front of you. You know the one I'm talking about. The one who looks like they have a small cart. Normal. But these shoppers in front of you are never a normal checkout. No. They have coupons (coo-pons, not cue-pons). They have questions. They forgot to get milk, so hold on a second while they run to get it. The shopper in front of you is the reason that grocery shopping takes so long and makes you avoid it like the hairdresser you hate but can't fully get rid of.One of my worst ever grocery shopping experiences happened on a day that I really shouldn't have been grocery shopping considering the mental state I was in. One of my best friends had just moved away from St. Paul to Ann Arbor for six months, and my boyfriend, Mister Man, had just moved to Des Moines for an unknown amount of time. I had probably gone to the store for that pint of ice cream I mentioned before, but had decided I should get other things while I was there (see checkout lane #2). I had grabbed all of my things and had found a lane I was SURE wasn't going to take a long time to get through. The first person in line had finished paying and had moved out of the checkout lane. The woman in front of me wasn't moving so, very politely, because I was raised well, I said, "Excuse me, you can go through now." She didn't seem to hear me. Actually she seemed to purposely look away, but that was my imagination, wasn't it? So I said it again, louder. She didn't respond. There was enough room to move my cart around her, but when I started to make my move, she all of a sudden snapped to attention, moved her cart up to fully block the lane, and looked away from me. SHE PURPOSELY LANE-BLOCKED ME AND THEN GAVE ME THE COLD SHOULDER! At this point, I thought I might not be above hitting an old woman, so I went to a different lane.I should have known where this was going and just left my cart and gone home, but I didn't. Instead I stayed behind two women who were checking out two carts of groceries, one they could pay with for food stamps, and the other they paid for with cash. Which, fine, that's a different issue, but my problem with it that day was that they forgot the pin number to their welfare cards. They called people on the phone to figure it out, they racked their brains until finally, 15 minutes later, they remembered it. Don't ask why I was still in line. I don't even know why.By the time they had gotten through, I had been waiting to check out for more time than I had grocery shopped. I fought back tears of frustration as I checked out and packed my bags. I then swore that I would never wait that long in a checkout line again. I would just leave my cart, perishables and produce items and all. Putting yourself though an ordeal at the checkout line is just not worth it. If I had the money, I would get that mail order grocery service, because that is just a beautiful thing. You come home to groceries without waiting in line! Genius.I've needed groceries for about two weeks now and I think I'm starting to realize where my hesitation is coming from. Maybe I'll wait another week and just borrow some of my roommate's milk until that's gone too.