Wednesday, October 11, 2006

And are you sure the full-fat version is a good idea, Ma'am?

My way of passing the time when standing in the ‘express aisle’ – a misnomer if ever I heard one - of a supermarket is to judge the lives of other customers based on the contents of their shopping.

This isn’t difficult, most of the time. The be-suited woman holding six Lean Cuisines and a pint of skim milk obviously lives alone, works long hours, spends a lot of time in the gym and never drinks. The young man holding a packet of mince, one onion and a packet of spaghetti is trying to impress a new girlfriend, and has forgotten the pasta sauce.

Hey, it keeps me amused.

I confessed this to a friend (whom, I suspect, will soon need a pseudonym. Polly hasn’t forgiven me yet, though, so I’m treading with caution) who told me that he did the same thing, only possibly more judgmentally. That, of course, made me wonder how many other people do this. And I got a bit paranoid.

So yesterday, finding myself needing a few things from the store, I employed a cunning trick.See if you can make a judgmental call about me based on the following:

One packet of Nurofen
One packet of Panadol
One bar of chocolate*
One glossy magazine
One carton of dishwashing powder.

You can’t, can you See what I did there? With the clever red herring grocery item?

I know. I'm an idiot. I wouldn't mind, but we didn't need dishwashing powder.

I’m off to Melbourne to render us destitute this evening, by the way, and I am still laptopless, so no blogging till Monday.

Have a good weekend.

*I haven’t bought chocolate in months. Jesus. You take your eye off the shelves for a second and the world goes crazy. You know you can get cookie dough Kit Kats now? The hell?

3 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

Hmmm...

My judgemnt based on that list would be that you were PMSing!

Painkillers + Chocolate + Glossy Mag... The Dishwashing powder would be the red herring for me!

~Sass

13 October, 2006  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Hello - followed a link :)

You are an utter loony but I think I have a new blog to read.

14 October, 2006  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

I was doing the 2am post-work shop in Central Market Coles once, and I had forgotten what I'd wandered in there for, and after some brief somnambulism I arrived at the checkout with some assorted cleaning products, a bunch of bananas, and a microwave pasta thingo. The weird bit was the response I got from the Point Of Sale Retail Terminal Operator*, being a snigger and whisper of "nice try", and it wasn't until half way home that it occurred to me that she'd thought I was trying to impress her with my healthiness and cleanliness when all I'd really wanted at that time of morning was clearly something to stave off the munchies. Quite frankly, if I'd done my usual trick of leaving the shop without the box of spring water I'd just bought, I'd have come back and given her a piece of my mind.

I swear this had a point...

* Checkout chick.

18 October, 2006  

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