Bone Picking, Vol. 2

Dear Giant Store That I Would Love to Avoid But I Can’t Because Even with Obsessively Matching Coupons with Weekly Sales I Cannot Beat Your Prices:

Hello again. Remember me?

Today, I visited you with my 2 delightful children, something I try desperately to avoid since public shopping establishments turn them into Stretch Armstrong and Elastigirl, respectively. They love to touch, grab, squish, and manhandle anything in their line of sight, and in your hallowed, uh, aisles, they find a cornucopia of snatch-able joys. This is not your fault; it’s just the way they are, and why I prefer to never enter your doors with more than 1 rapid howler monkey at a time. I don’t like being outnumbered.

However. While the Velcro-handed mature of my offspring is not your doing, you have certainly gone out of your way to encourage their tactile behavior. Is it really necessary for you to rearrange your entire floor plan in the middle of high traffic time so that I must do loop after loop to find items I normally could find blindfolded (you and I, we have a long, if tumultuous, history)? Must your new layout be completely counter-intuitive to any logic whatsoever so as to frustrate me and waste my time? Yes, I get that you want us there as long as possible, wandering in a stupor so that we get distracted by more and more of your shiny, unnecessary wares, thus running up our bills and lining your profit margin. But that theory also insights rage in customers like me and make us walk straight out the door muttering colorful language and leaving a cart full of frozen good melting in the middle of the main thoroughfare. But the kicker is that your rearrangement actually makes the aisles smaller, causing us to smoosh over to the side so that our children are close enough to lick the merchandise without bending over from their seated positions, lest we run over each other’s toes with our carts. You’re going to need more insurance to cover shopping-related injuries.

All in all, this was an almost perfect storm of retail irritation, and as such, I am not at all sorry for the cans, boxes, and cartons strewn about in our wake. And next time, put Excedrin on sale. We all need it.