What's My Line?

Last night, I stopped at Dominicks, one of the premier grocery stores in this area, for one of their Friday night specials. A super humongous refrigerated pizza. Seriously, this mofo is big and surprisingly good, with a crust that goes "sniiicccckkkzzz" when you cut through it. And best of all, it's only $5.99!

Hopefully, someone from Dominicks will read this plug, and I'll be free pizza'd for life, but something tells me that's not going to happen.

Anyway, I snagged my pizza and headed for the checkout line. This particular Dominicks never has but one "full service" line open. The rest are all self-serve, which I refuse to buy into on general principles. If you're going to make me check and bag my own groceries, then let's see a discount, say at least 10% in return for my trouble. And if any of you grocers out there are interested in this idea, then you can enter into a licensing agreement with me under my "Discounts for Viscounts" program (Slogan: Where you feel like a British nobleman ranking above a baron and below an earl). Check it out on the internet if you don't believe me.

So, I wheel into line and in front of me are two women, who I figure are mother and daughter. They closely resembled a re-animated Eunice Shriver and Rose Kennedy, with the long drawn faces, horse teeth and LL Bean barn wear. They only had about 10 items, but 6 or them were bottles of wine. And, unfortunately, Gurnee, Illinois has some weird ordinance where you have to buy liquor in the liquor department only, and not in the general check-out. Yeah, I know, you've got me ...

Right away, I knew check-out was going to take a little longer than normal. So I just stood there and said to myself "wait for it". And sure enough, the checkout lady told them that they'd have to buy the wine in the liquor department. After a few seconds of huffing and puffing Eunice pulled the wine bottles out of the cart and shoved them all at Rose. I thought to myself "wait for it"... and Rose dropped two of the bottles on the floor, shattering them.

I like the bouquet that wafts from a nice glass of wine, but the bouquet turns to a rotten alcoholly stench when it's mixed with floor dirt. As expected, gasps and apologies were voiced and mops, brooms and dustpans appeared to clean up the mess.

Eunice gave Rose her credit card to pay for the groceries and padded off to the liquor department to pay for her booze, what was left of it, and presumably to pick up another couple of bottles to replace the broken ones. Rose, unfamiliar with the ceremonial swiping of the card, took a while to get it right. When the signature line appeared, her hand hovered over it with the stylus and hesitated. I told myself "wait for it". And sure enough, Rose babbled to the cashier that she couldn't sign her daughter's name and went dashing off to the liquor department to find her, leaving me and the 40 other people behind me cooling our collective heels.

Several minutes passed and Eunice reappeared with Rose in tow and signed the electronic receipt. Then she stood there, putting all of her things back into her wallet and then back into her purse.

At this point, I'd had about all of this horseshit I could take and I bumped Eunice with my cart, forcibly. Eunice shot me a dirty look and I said "Move". After one more dirty look, the family Kennedy departed the line and left the building.

I'd like to think that later that evening, Rose and Eunice sat in front of a quiet fire in their wing back chairs in the drawing room of their mansion in Lake Forest, tut-tutting about their simply awful experience at the grocery store that afternoon.

And then they pulled the cork on their fifth bottle of wine.