Broadsheet: Dancin' in the Dark

Better to write for yourself and have no public, than to write for the public and have no self. - Cyril Connolly

Monday, December 05, 2005

Dancin' in the Dark

Nightmare on 41st street......

So there I am with all the other panicked people on the day before a snowstorm in the Superfresh at the 41st street plaza in Hampden at about 6:00 last night. I swear, I have never seen "snow panic shopping" like the denizens of Baltimore. It was my own fault for waiting until the end of the weekend to do my major grocery shopping for the week. I had put it off in favor of finishing a good book, and now I was paying the price.

I will never understand the mentality of people who park a shopping cart smack in the middle of an aisle, with no room to get another cart past on either side, while they obliviously wander away, and peruse the aisle at the far end, or even head to another aisle completely, while traffic piles up behind their abandoned cart. And don't even get me started on the little old ladies whose cart speed is best measured in feet per hour, when you're trying to speed down an aisle that has the one item you need.

After enduring this rodeo of the damned for about an hour, I stood in line 4 carts deep at the check out line along with the rest of the cattle.

Another pet peeve about grocery stores: I try to put my items on the belt in like groupings to make it easier on the bagger. You know, frozen foods go together, canned goods, fresh veggies have their own pile, and then I load all the household items like soap and toilet paper together. Anyway, my checkout girl last night just likes to play with your head when it comes to unpacking groceries. I found People magazine in with the snow peas, and soap in the bag with my frozen pot stickers.....Argghghg.

Anyway, she had scanned all but about one bag of items, when suddenly, the power in the entire plaza went out, plunging the entire store into total darkness. The reaction to this was similar to that of a crowd watching fireworks "oooooh", "aahhhhh". After about 10 seconds or so, a backup generator kicked in with some minimal lighting, but all the checkout counters were down. Someone came on the PA system and said that a transformer at the 34th street substation had blown and they were working on it ASAP. Power was expected back in about 10 minutes. Well, 10 minutes came and went, and now I'm seriously considering abandoning my shopping excursion from hell. Finally, the manager came around and they were able to manually reboot the cashier computers and scanners off the auxiliary power. The only good thing to happen, was that my information had been saved in the computer and we didn't have to rescan the entire cart.

I escaped out to the car, but it was weird driving through a mostly dark Hampden on the way home. I had left the house around 4:45 to "run to the grocery store". I finally got home around 6:45...

posted by Broadsheet @ 9:33 AM

3 Editorial Opinions:

At December 05, 2005, Cham said…

You can make fun of the Baltimoreans and th snow all you want, I certainly did at one time. I'm originally from the Buffalo area so I always laughed the loudest.

However, back in 1996 we received 26 inches of snow one fine March day. For 5 days I could not leave my neighborhood since no plows were a comin. I ran out of milk, bread and toilet paper. It was NOT pleasant. I do not like wiping my ass with a paper towel.

I learned my lesson good.
At December 05, 2005, Broadsheet said…

Cham - Ah, that's the beauty of being able to WALK to the nearest market or superette. BTW - I attended college in Wisconsin, so the snow panic is still amusing, but the city's complete inability to deal with it is not funny at all.
At December 06, 2005, Jen said…

Gosh, we must have been lucky--we were at that Superfresh maybe at 5:30 (since we couldn't get out of Hampden because of the Mayor's parade, we decided to do some grocery shopping). We were even luckier earlier in the day, as I ran down 36th street right toward the tow truck that was ready to hitch up my car and remove it from the impending traffic of the parade (and here I thought I was lucky for getting such a great space in front of Golden West Cafefor brunch). "Don't tow it!" I shouted, as loud as a soft speaker such as myself could. He looked at the pathetic state of me and, perhaps, not really wanting to fool with towing a car anyway, said "take it." Phew.