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You've heard of road
rage, airline rage, postal worker rage, and tormented teenage nerd
rage. Now get ready for the newest item in the expanding catalog of
social irritability indicators: SUPERMARKET rage. It was bound to happen
sooner or later. In Lowell, Massachusetts this past week, a 38-year-old
woman apparently attacked a 51-year-old woman who tried to sneak 13
grocery items through a 12-item express lane. The fracas began with an
exchange of colorful words at the checkout counter, then escalated into
something more physical outside the store. Unfortunately I wasn't there
to gawk at the fisticuffs in person; I had to settle for a relatively
bland online news account of the incident. (That's how I collect most of
my information about the outside world these days.) It appears that the
two women engaged in a fairly fiery public brawl— at least by
traditional supermarket brawling standards. After eluding the
authorities for a time, the woman who took umbrage at the 13-item
shopper finally turned herself in. Today she stands accused of assault
and battery with a dangerous weapon: her foot (with shoe attached, of
course). If convicted, she could face up to ten years in a place with no
express lanes at all.
Do I sound as if I'm making light of the Lowell, Massachusetts,
express lane incident? If so, shame on me. I should probably restrain my
more flippant propensities for a story of such obvious gravity. After
all, nobody should have to get kicked about the head, even with BARE
feet, for slipping an extra tomato or Snickers bar onto the conveyor
belt. Those express lane item limits are merely guidelines, not holy
writ. We all know how infernally long it takes to pass through a
standard checkout lane behind three or four shopping carts filled above
the brim with Pampers and six-packs of V-8 Vegetable Juice. It's even
more maddening when you see the person ahead of you retrieve a two-inch
stack of coupons from a pocket or handbag, then slowly dole them out to
the cashier. You can hardly blame a shopper with 13 items for wanting to
skip the interminable wait and sneak through the express lane, can you?
So what if the stated limit is 12? Supermarket item counts are open to
interpretation, like Bible verses or Florida ballots. If you've placed
three identical cans of Bumble Bee Chunk Light Tuna in a neat stack,
couldn't that stack conceivably count as one item? You don't count a
bunch of bananas as five or six separate items, do you? How many of us
actually enumerate the contents of our shopping carts anyway? If my haul
looks appropriately skimpy, I do a quick estimate and head for the
express lane. I find it hard to believe that any right-minded citizen
would force a fellow-shopper to endure the living limbo of the Pampers
lanes, let alone kick her about the head, because her cart holds 13
items instead of the officially sanctioned 12. I could see losing it
over 18 or 20 items, or even 16, but surely our common humanity obliges
us to forgive a surplus of one.
It's not as if an express lane is much faster than an ordinary
lane to begin with. It promises us an expeditious checkout, but, like
many other of life's promises, it generally reveals itself to be a sorry
illusion, a cheat, a come-on without a blissful consummation. How often
do we find ourselves standing there motionless, as glumly and passively
as sheared sheep, while we watch a shopper in one of the Pampers lanes—
a shopper who got on line precisely when we di— pass through the
checkout, pay the cashier, and break away to freedom? It happens often
enough to make me ponder the existence of a nose-tweaking deity. And
naturally, if you or I had chosen the other lane, we would have been
stranded THERE while eight or ten shoppers passed through the express
lane. (All this is in accordance with Bayan's Law of Supermarket
Checkouts: whichever line you choose automatically becomes the slowest.
It's something a veteran cynic quickly learns to live with.)
We hate to watch others pass us by, especially when we're playing
by the rules. It takes discipline and character to abide by rules, yet
the world seems to tolerate rule-breakers. Not only tolerate them, but
EMBRACE them. Such inequities are bound to stimulate rage in the very
marrow of our downtrodden, law-abiding bones, and for this reason alone
I can begin to understand why the 38-year-old woman in Lowell,
Massachusetts, allegedly attacked the 51-year-old woman who carried an
extra item to the express lane. No doubt the irate shopper had carefully
counted the groceries in her cart; she might even have sacrificed a bag
of Doritos to make the cut. How she would have loved to carry that bag
of Doritos home with her, and enjoy it in front of the TV on a chilly
evening, but she was a vehemently virtuous citizen: 12 items and no
more. How, then, could she abide the brazen temerity of the middle-aged
woman in front of her? Thirteen items in her cart, and the cashier was
letting her GET AWAY WITH IT. Just like that. No reprimand, no request
to relinquish that extra Snickers bar. What's our civilization coming to
when the authorities let a shopper make a mockery of the rules? They're
making a mockery of ME, she thought. I could have kept that bag of
Doritos in my cart. Why do I do it? Why take the trouble to bend myself
to the rules when everyone else breaks them? Of course, if I ever broke
them— if I carried 13 items to the 12-item express lane— you KNOW the
cashier would stop me. I never get away with anything— never have, never
will. But look at that woman with the 13 items— who does she think she
is, Nicole Kidman? I can't stand it! I can't stand it!
The law-abiding shopper was burning inside, silently but
lethally. You know the feeling. Finally she could take it no more, and
she blurted out the insult that led to the greater scuffle outside. The
great irony, of course, is that the woman who wouldn't break the rules
will be facing a possible prison sentence of up to ten years. That's how
it goes: chronic outlaws tend to get away with it, but the quiet,
inoffensive folks who finally snap— they're the ones who pay dearly. If
the irate Lowell woman loses her case, she'll be a convict, looking out
at the world from behind bars, watching all those free lawbreakers make
merry. As for the woman who got kicked about the head— the next time she
contemplates getting into the express lane, you can bet she'll count her
groceries more than once.
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The
Cynical Pick of the Week. 