Coincidence
and my impeccably poor timing placed me at the grocery store on
Monday afternoon. It also happened to be Memorial Day so the store
was more crowded than usual.
I
normally try to get there as soon as they open on Sunday morning so
as to avoid the humans and their inability to put their food in a
cart and then pay for said food without being confounded by the
capitalist society in which we live. I have come to the conclusion
that people who cannot navigate the self-checkout are going to be the
first ones to go when Terminator happens.
Since
Monday was a holiday, I decided to forgo gathering my weekly
provisions for a day in the vain hopes of giving the produce a chance
to last the week. There has to be an employee training video
somewhere that instructs the staff to kick every piece of produce
down a hallway before putting it out for sale. By the time Friday
rolls around, the bruises are soft and mushy.
Since
the holiday was Memorial Day, the store was filled with flag store
patriots gunning for the gout while rushing to relax. Carts filled
with burgers, buns and excessively large bottles of ketchup were
blocking aisles and walkways. Dullards aimlessly flip-flopping about
the store as if they had never bought groceries before.
The
store I normally go to is located in a part of town that is populated
by a lot of South Asian immigrants. It's not out of the ordinary to
hear multiple languages or to see robes, wraps and hijabs while I'm
there. For me, that's part of the appeal of going to this location. Instead of heading out in the direction of the suburbs to be
subjected to the entitled soccer moms. I would much rather be
saddled by a language barrier than some idiot that's trying to figure out
how to use their thumbs while behind the wheel of a car.
While I
was rummaging through the stepped on apples, there were three
generations worth of a South Asian family milling about. There was a husband,
wife and grandmother. Both women were wrapped in robes and all three
were being run ragged by a rambunctious toddler.
Things
went downhill fast when two Harley bros showed up and were horribly
offended by a family shopping for groceries. Loud enough for
everyone to hear, one of them spouted off with, “What the fuck? Don't they know this is America?” These guys were clearly card
carrying members of the Great American Stupid.
My
first thought was, “Yes. Yes, it is.” I wanted to thank this
alert citizen for using his bigotry and xenophobia to remind me that
this is, in fact, America.
Two
idiots dressed head to toe in orange and black motorcycle garb, as if
they had an endorsement from the motorcycle company, had the temerity
to wonder aloud about someone else's choice of clothing. The strange
thing was that they were in the store before me and I don't recall
seeing any bikes in the parking lot. These two patriots may as well
have been dressed up like Super Dave since they were wearing biker
costumes without the bikes. I may as well dress up like Batman when
I hit the store next week.
Luckily,
the family was headed toward the checkout and paid the cos-play
racists no mind. Unfortunately for me, I couldn't shake these
intellectual titans while they had a very loud conversation about
what's wrong with this country and how they could fix everything. No
matter what aisle I went down or how fast I was moving, Tweedle-Dee
and Tweedle-Bigot were always right behind me.
The one
guy did have some rather telling artwork on his arms, mainly in the
form of a large iron cross on his left forearm. The urge to lob eggs
at these assholes was suppressed only by my desire to not get my ass
kicked in a grocery store. Which definitely would have happened.
I
wasn't able to ditch them until I made it through the self-checkout
lane while they were busy giving a hard time to their human cashier,
who just happened to be black. I guess no one told these shitheads
that their rally was in Dayton, OH this weekend. They could have
joined the other nine shitheads that showed up there only to be
shouted down by 600 counter protestors.
There
was a recently published study that was trying to figure out why the
population in the Pittsburgh area was on the decline. One of the
conclusions of the study was how unwelcome people from other
countries feel when they live here. They have a tendency to pack up
and leave Pittsburgh as soon as they can in order to head to
friendlier parts of the country. I couldn't imagine having to jump
through so many hoops to gain a chance to come here and then have to
put up with this bullshit. I'm from here and can barely tolerate it.
I've
had enough of this “Most Livable City” horseshit.
