Thursday, March 10, 2016

Two supermarket interactions:

1) As I go to park my cart and head to grab a carton of eggs, a (small) (Chinese) grandmother darts around and I find myself sidestepping her.

"We are dancing," I try to joke as I smile at her, but she can't understand me.

As I look at eggs and she looks at eggs, she picks up a pricey carton of free range eggs and holds out to me and taps it.

"Ninety-nine," she was like, "Ninety-nine."

Though the listed price was like three-fifty, I think there was some sale or accidental markdown that she was trying to clue me in to, which I found just lovely, since she had to overcome communications barriers and she really didn't have to do that at all.

2) As I go into the checkout line, a (later middle-aged) (black) man is standing there, waiting there at the end past the register by the bagging area, and he catches my eye and nods at me edgily.

After a bit, the (older) (short) (white) supermarket manager comes up to check him out with his alcohol, and this change spread out below the register isn't enough, and the guy takes a ton of time to rustle around in his clothes and pull out two more dollars, this time in bills, and I notice that the McDonald's plastic cup in his hand jingles a bit from change sliding around in it.

"Next time, no sale," the older guy tells him.  "You're drunk, those are the rules."

After he leaves, a (hispanic) bagboy is like, "I don't know why we even sell to him, we should just stop that," to which the (hispanic) (female) cashier in my line seemed agnostic.

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