I do not hate Christmas.

[vakkotaur]

I do, however, absolutely loathe stores on weekends between Thanksgiving and Christmas. Today I had reason to get a meat thermometer and neither of the grocery stores in town had any in stock. That meant a trip to K-Mart or Shopko. Given my experiences in K-Mart, to Shopko I went.

Shopko was, of course, crowded. I managed to get through the obstacle course of people gawking and almost walking and find the selection of meat thermometers and chose one. Back through the store I go in Brownian motion, maneuvering through the crowd and trying to find a short line. There are no short lines. There are no express lines. There is one line not quite as long as the others, and I make the mistake of getting in that one.

Naturally, this line is the one with the slow clerk and the woman with an item that won't scan at the price she insists it ought to be. This took three phone calls before the clerk gets anyone to call back. That merely confirms the price the lady won't pay. As this is going on a supervisor tries and fails to quietly tell off the clerk in the next line over. From what I could gather, they managed to both be wrong about something. Finally the the lady asks, "Do I need to bring you the sign?!" and goes off to get the sign. She doesn't find it because another employee brings it, saying it was on the floor and not on the shelf. Eventually the lady comes back and gets the item (a Sunbeam four slice toaster) for about $20.

The things that did not go wrong were that the lady's daughters were actually rather well-behaved (hallelujah!) and the screaming tot was in the line farthest from me. Still, by the time I got out when I passed the Salvation Army bell-ringer my goodwill toward men consisted solely of not wringing his neck. And no, there isn't a Target in town.