At the end of a Thursday I was already feeling a little run down after finding nothing of interest at Hollywood Video in the new releases. They are still holding out on “The Man”. Any movie with Eugene Levy is bound to have some positive moments. I had decided to make a quick run over to Stop and Shop to grab some chicken to broil for our standard Ceasar salad. The shopping was quick and fine including some vindication of our tastes given that they have finally stocked both Newman’s Own Limeade and French Vanilla Yoplait after multiple fruitless incidents searching in the dairy section. When, haggard, I arrived at the checkout counter I picked a line that was so short that I could just place my items onto the conveyer belt to have them conveyed down to the nice cashier sitting awaiting them. I hadn’t researched before taking 8 individual Yoplaits onto the belt that the person currently interacting with the cashier was a type 1 supermarket line delaying disaster.

The woman ahead of me in line was probably 80 years old. As I looked over the latest periodicals to learn about key incidents like the break-up between Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes or the secret meeting between Jessica Simpson and Nick Lachey I noticed that the nice old lady in front of me was disputing a charge from the items rung-up in the register. Unfortunately she was having trouble, due to advanced degeneration of her eyesight, reading the monitor designed to allow you to read your receipt before it is published. So after she argued for a few minutes that she couldn’t read it another cashier suggested to my poor cashier to print out the receipt so that she could read it in print. He did so and she then burst out with the accusation that she had been overcharged for apple sauce. The apple sauce had been advertised at 10 for 10 dollars or one dollar per jar and it had rung-up as $1.45. The wonderful woman in front of me demanded a reason why the amount was different than her expectations. The cashier referred her to the manager who normally sits behind the counter where lottery tickets are sold but who was probably hanging out with the butcher in the deli area talking about frozen shrimp. So a bagger girl who looked to be about twelve ran to the customer service area, grabbed a circular, and let the woman complaining about the cost of apple sauce know that the problem was that the 15 oz. Size of Stop and Shop apple sauce is the one that is on sale and not the 25 oz. Size that the lady had placed in her cart.

The 12 year old girl didn’t realize that antagonizing the lady by pointing at the circular and huffing with an aloof attitude wasn’t going to appease an angry woman insistent on fixing the system so the lady become more infuriated rather than less infuriated and demanded to have the apple sauce stricken from her cart and order. The cashier complied and he offered her a new receipt without the apple sauce which she then studied to ensure that no hancky-panky had occurred from the Stop and Shop corporation trying to steal from her through bait and switch signage. She then finally managed to get the manager paged and the manager came over and committed to check out whether the signage was misleading on the apple sauce or if it was actually the woman’s mistake.

Since she had a tab to pay and a set of groceries to bag she decided to complete the transaction sans apple sauce on principle. The bill came out to $13.87. Her response was to write a check for $33.87 and to obtain a cash back of $20.00. While she was slowly writing out this check she then complained that customers don’t have all day to spend at the supermarket. This moment was when I realized that my thousand hours of zen relaxation training had paid off as I looked over at the frustrated cashier and didn’t even laugh.

So finally I was rung-up with my yogurt, chicken tenders, and limeade after about twenty minutes of watching the Stop and Shop drama. The cashier was highly apologetic about how patient I was and I mentioned to him compassionately that we will all get old some day. I wheeled my small cart full of booty out of Stop and Shop and on my way out I passed the woman and the customer service manager. The manager was placing a 25 oz. jar of Stop and Shop brand apple sauce, valued at $1.45 into the old lady’s cart and telling her that the mistake was theirs because of the mix-up of the signage around the apple sauce sale. I wheeled my cart out to the lot, drove home, ate a French Vanilla yogurt, drank some Newman’s own limeade with seltzer, ate some chicken Ceasar salad with freshly broiled chicken, and watched “The Sweetest Thing”, with Sarah as Madeline slept – But I had a craving for potato pancakes with about 25 oz. of apple sauce.