A well-deserved bollocking!
I just got back from the grocery store.

On a Sunday afternoon, you expect a bit of idiocy at the grocery store- for some reason the idiots and the rather senile elderly like to do their shopping then. So I was expecting some twatbadgery from the start. Due to a number of things going on in my life this week, my temper is a bit short anyway, so I was not looking forward to this.

Now, when I go to the store (being a guy) I tend to go in there, figure out what I need, move quickly to it and get it, then get the fuck out. I really lack patience with people who tend to dawdle in the place, especially when they leave their cart blocking the aisle while they poke through a full shelf looking at expiration dates, as though somewhere in the back is a gallon of milk that won't go bad within the next decade.

So I get to the back of the store to get a package of chicken, and find myself behind a woman in her 80s or so, in one of those electric carts with the basket on the front. She Can't seem to figure out what she's after, and is moving at about the same speed as your average turtle, peering myopically at the shelves. Ordinarily I would simply go around her and keep going- but no, a woman in her 70s has the aisle blocked as she pokes through the hamburger. I feel my temper rising.

The woman in the electric cart stops, then leans over toward the little plastic tubs of ready-made salads, Only thing is, she's stopped about two feet too far away and can't reach.

How the fuck do you get to be that age and be incapable of managing a cart? For that matter, how did the other woman reach her age without figuring out how to keep from blocking the entire goddam aisle?

Something snapped inside me at that moment. Stepping out from behind my cart, I got between the electric cart and the salads and picked up the tub she had been reaching for. "Is this the one you were after?"

She looked up at me in shock and stammered out, "Chicken salad."

I glanced at the tub to be sure, then smiled and handed it to her. "Here you go, then."

She smiled gratefully. "I just stopped a little too far from the case." I smiled back and nodded.

The other old woman heard this exchange and exclaimed, "Oh! I'm blocking the aisle, aren't I?" and moved her cart, and we exchanged smiles as I thanked her.

Result.

The lesson to be learned? Sometimes a proper bollocking is not the best approach. A quick, decisive action and a gentle word has much better effect.
( The Resident Loon Not a demographic. Do not measure., Sun 23 Sep 2007, 19:53, Reply)