What is it about grocery shopping two days before a holiday that brings out the absolute worst in people? We were headed to Costco today to pick up a few necessary items, and I guess I didn't think to anticipate the absolute disaster that would await us there.

On our trips to Costco, I like to leisurely take Addison from sample to sample seeing what she'll eat (and what she'll throw in disgust), and then we celebrate a successful shopping trip by splitting an all beef hot dog.

Today we were lucky to get out alive.

I guess I should have known what was coming when the roads were completely empty...

...and the parking lot was overflowing (so we had to park WAY far away..shuttle service, anyone?)

...and when I started walking towards an empty cart next to my parked car and an old lady came out of nowhere, sprouted wings and snatched it from my extended arm.

...and when I went to the main cart dispenser-THEY WERE ALL GONE.

...and when the line to checkout stretched the ENTIRE length of the store (each cart was overflowing with items).

...and when we had to literally dodge the mad crowd of people who were obviously running by us to grab all of those pre-made pumpkin pies, 50 pound bags of chocolate chips and gallons of Vermont apple cider.

I did what any self respecting woman with two volatile babies in the cart would do.

I asked my sister Andria to stand in line while I shopped. Such love, such such love. (she gladly did it)

After grabbing all of our items, I switched places with her in line so that she could go grab some samples (loudly explaining to all those around us in line that we were tag teaming it so they wouldn't think that I was just skipping the line.)

It was when we were FINALLY up to get in an actual checkout line, I became aware of a horrible, horrible thing that was happening (and totally explained the long line)

Since a picture is worth 1,000 words, I drew a sketch that at least has to be worth a couple hundred...(and oh yes, multiply the long line by 4 and that's much closer to the actual length...I ran out of space on my "paper")


Notice the people creeping in from the side? I caught one woman's expression, and her face was overcome by PURE GUILT. The rest of them would not look me in the eye as they carefully crept forward, completely SKIPPING the line. They knew exactly what they were doing... and yet they did it anyway (line of shame)

If they had just let the long line feed to the side cash registers, we all would have had a shorter wait, but because they felt that they were too good to wait in the line with the rest of us, we all had to wait twice as long while they cut up the side.

tsk. tsk. tsk.

For some reason that really got on my nerves, making the hot dog split with Addison completely unenjoyable...even when she signed "more" "food" "thank you" I had a hard time not being annoyed watching this gross injustice playing out in front of me.

Why do normally sweet, wonderful people (giving the benefit of the doubt here) turn into monsters in the grocery store right before a holiday?

I think I'm going to start carrying around an orange traffic vest. If I see this happen again, I'll whip it out and start directing traffic....blowing my whistle (yeah, I'm going to need to get a whistle) and waving frantically when I see those naughty line cutters...

This may be a little thing, but it's those small common courtesies that go right before holidays in the grocery store. Why oh why?