Time Is Money Friend

        I’m not sure about the rest of you, but I consider my time to be an extremely valuable thing and I don’t like other people wasting it. I piss away enough already, as evidenced by my weekly ramblings here on Coffee and Scotch, so I find it particularly annoying when inconsiderate jackasses employ copious amounts of stupidity and self-importance to waste precious minutes of my life. Now, people waste our time everywhere we go; hell I could write for days about how people at work waste our time and how the government wastes our time. The government has a monopoly on wastefulness in general. What has been grinding my gears lately though is the imbeciles who have no idea how to pay for things and manage their finances at the checkout counter. If I didn’t know better I’d think I was stuck behind a bunch of career felons who just got released from prison and were buying bags of topsoil at Home Depot for the first time in their lives.

        The absolute most heinous offense you can commit when you’re checking out is a lack of preparedness. Are people just clueless about the process or do they have a complete lack of regard for everyone else? How many times have you been in line behind some ditsy woman reading Parade magazine while her groceries are being scanned?
Lady, for the love of God, at least start the 20 minute archaeological excavation of your purse in search of your wallet. It’s not like the cash register is some kind of mysterious place where the procedural outcome is clouded in a veil of secrecy. Here’s a news flash for you sweetheart, you need to fucking pay for all that crap and that hitherto unheard of event occurs shortly after the last item is scanned by the cashier. Can everyone agree to get on the fucking ball and pay a little attention? Incidentally, when did we start working for the stores we shop at? What kind of scam is self checkout? How brilliant are the executives who made the decision to have us simultaneously spending money at their stores and also working for them for free? Sure, I’ll ring up my purchases, pay for them and bag them myself. Fuck we’re gullible.

        Figuring out which checkout line to get in has become a complicated science as well. On the surface, sizing up a line based on how many people are in it and how many items they have would seem to be enough to go by. Unfortunately, you need to stereotype people in order to save yourself a headache. Personally, I never roll the dice on old people, especially old ladies. Grandma is the number one perpetrator of the social crime, paying by check in the first degree. Check payers always seem to be pocketbook archaeologists as well, waiting for the last second to start the check book dig. After they find the ancient relic, they need to wait for the GPS satellite to get into synchronous orbit so they can trans-locate the pen in their cavernous purse.
Naturally, the pen won’t work because it was designed for form over function. Who wants a pen that reliably writes when you can have a twelve dollar, craft fair, decorative pen that some art school dropout hot glued plastic crystals onto? If you’re sharp-eyed and lucky enough to avoid the pay-by-checker, beware the stay at home soccer mom with time to kill. Chances are she’s going to pay with cash, which is fine, but she’s gonna screw you at the last second in a move I call “exact change diving”. One sure way to spot a change diver is by looking for signs of early onset scoliosis. Every time soccer mom buys a venti, extra hot, soy, no whip, caramel macchiato, she tosses the change down into the depths of her bag until it’s so heavy it hurts her back to carry it. Later, in the express line at Shop Rite when her box of Tampax costs $6.37, it’s time to plunge headfirst into the bowels of her behemoth pocketbook in search of the elusive exact change. What should have taken 10 seconds turns into minutes as she surfaces for air in order to dive again for the last two pennies.

        So you’ve avoided the grannies and the hunchbacks and you’ve slid in line with your debit card out, ready to rock and roll. There’s still a few pitfalls to look out for, the problem is they are hard to spot. The first problem is tricky but avoidable with a little awareness. Make sure you’re not the guy at the register with an item that doesn’t have a price or a bar code on it. Nothing brings the checkout carousel to a grinding halt like seeing the cashier reach for the intercom and broadcast a price check on your box of Trojans.  An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of embarrassment, trust me. Next come the dreaded, “Why yes I’d love to fill out the application for your store credit card so I can save 10% on my purchase today” people. This always seems to happen to me when I’m past the point of no return in a line. Once you’ve made it into the cash register on deck circle and you’ve already waited for five minutes or more in the same line, you can’t abandon it. It’s one of the unwritten rules of the universe, like starring at nice breasts and absentmindedly bouncing any tennis ball that finds its way into your hand. Lastly, you need to try and dodge the dreaded key ring rolodex of disorganized store rewards card scanners. Buying a sixty-five cent pack of gum at Walgreens, better scan my card and get the bonus points. Two minutes later they’ve managed to extricate the rewards card mobile from their pocket and they’re hunting for the right scrap of plastic like the school janitor looking for the key to utility closet number nine. Your knew you were in Walgreens, you couldn’t have started that process while you were waiting in line checking Facebook on your iPhone dipshit? The theme of the day here is preparedness. If everybody could take an extra second or two to get organized at the checkout line, we all might be able to get a day or two of our miserable lives back.