Grocery Aisle Traffic Jams – OMG!

Recently my wife and I were doing our weekly grocery shopping at a local store and a situation happened that I have seen many times but never "sounded off" about before. Before now, that is.

There may be many things in this world that irk you a little, and other things that make you kinda crazy, but there's one thing that makes my head want to explode and that's grocery shopping on a busy day.

You know how guys are, we usually have our list in-hand and we're in and out of the store pretty quick. Well on this particular occasion my wife and I needed to do some stocking up for the next couple of weeks so this was going to be a rather long trip to the store anyway but to make matters worse, it appeared that everyone had the same idea we did at the same time we did. As Poo would say, "Oh Bother".

What can you do but grit your teeth, smile, be as polite as mamma taught you to be and get it done.

So here is what happened, maybe you have seen this too;

We're at the end of an aisle, in front of us is a woman and another older woman whom I would guess to be her mother. Their basket is on the right side of the aisle whilst they are browsing on the left side, thereby blocking the aisle in both directions. This is one of those things that happens all the time, irritating though it may be it usually doesn't last but a few seconds, they get what they're looking for and move on. This time it took longer than a few seconds.

As we stood there, politely waiting our turn, more people came around the corner behind us, obviously either not paying attention to the situation in front of us, or not caring, they started to go around us... which they could not do of course because both sides of the aisle were still blocked by the woman and her mother. So now we have four or more baskets at a complete standstill at the end of the aisle while these two take their sweet time reading labels!

My face was getting red, steam was already coming out of my wife's ears but she did good and held her tongue.

I cannot tell you how the situation ended for sure, all I knew was the top of my wife's head was about to come off and I had to do something quick. Suddenly I noticed an opening for us to back out and go to the next aisle, and I took it. Hoping beyond all hope that the traffic jam would resolve itself before we got back around to that corner again.

But here's the part that nearly made my head explode; The two women who made the mess in the first place finally found what they were looking, or gave up, one of the two. When they turned back to retrieve their basket, instead of continuing in the direction they were pointed, which would have fixed everything, I noticed as we cleared the corner headed down the next aisle that they actually turned their basket back into the oncoming traffic jam. OMG! REALLY? I was shouting it in my head but thankfully not in my outside voice.

I wish them well, I hope they have long and happy lives, but... moms please teach your kids what the phrase "common courtesy" is, and how it works.

There are no actual rules as to how you should drive your grocery cart, I always try to leave a way for people to get around me when I have to stop and look for something. That's how I was raised.

The wayI see it, the 'Golden Rule' always applies, "treat others as you wish to be treated.'