There was shopping to do and we had to get the kids out of
the house.
If you have a car in New York City you are one of a
privileged few. You can blaze a trail of adventure and wanderlust across the
land. Or, you can simply drive someplace where it is a little less crowded to
do your shopping, avoiding the hordes that clog your local stores for the
slightly less overstuffed shopping experiences of the suburbs.
Pro tip for current and future parents: IKEA stores have a
free indoor play area called “Småland”
where they will babysit your kids for free if you are in their store.
This past Sunday we headed to Hicksville for the chance to
look again at a couch we may want to buy from IKEA and to do our bulk shopping
where it was slightly less aggravating.
The drive had put our children to sleep and my wife and I
enjoyed listening to Joan Jett’s greatest hits and catching up on adult
conversation while our three blessed hellions slumped in their child seats. We
decided to get some of our shopping done while they napped. I headed to BJs.
BJ’s is not as fun as it sounds. It’s not an emporium of
fellatio but rather a warehouse club like Costco or Sam’s Club. Showing your
BJ’s card only wins you the pleasure of buying in bulk.
The BJs in Westbury, Long Island, was a lot less crowded
than the one we usually visit in College Point, Queens. I found the things I
needed easily. I got in line at one of the self-checkout lanes as going to one
of the other lines means an incredibly long wait behind people whose shopping
carts are filled to the brim with bulk items.
The woman is taking too long looking over everyone’s cart
and there is a line forming just to get out of the store.
The only question I’ve ever had facing this security check
in the past is if one of my daughters asks me if this person is going to draw a
Mickey Mouse on our receipt.
The woman looks at my cart for what seems like an extended period
and then circles the number of items on my receipt. She says there is a
problem, something about me having too many items in my cart. Her English is poor,
and I ask what is the item that wasn’t scanned. She points to the checkout
area, and I think she wants me to go back there but I want to understand this
problem and solve it quickly. I’m not going to scan every item again or stand
on another line if the store is bringing up the issue. I keep asking what the
problem is and what’s not right, and I get no answer. The woman leaves me there
and starts checking other customers’ receipts. A chubby woman mumbles something
under her breath at me as she walks by, but not loud enough to hear.
The receipt women with broken English calls someone else
over. He checks my receipt. He counts the items in my cart. He checks the
receipt again; he counts the items in my cart again. People keep passing by and
looking at me. I stay stoic.
The young man now checks the UPC numbers on every item
against my receipt. He’s moving more things around in the cart and checking off
each item on the receipt.
“The tomato sauce,” he says before scurrying off. “The
tomato sauce.”
The receipt checking lady has forgotten about me. Her backup
left me standing there with my marked-up receipt and no recommendations. I
don’t bother to check his work; I just want out of there. I put the tomato
sauce aside and walk out the door. No one stops me. I’m free but without the
tomato sauce we wanted to buy and with precious time wasted.
Westbury BJ’s: 1, Polite New Yorker: 0.
I had traded the aggravation of weaving your way through
crowds of clueless shoppers to being shaken down by store security and singled
out as a potential shoplifter. While this was annoying it could have been so
much worse. People who forget to scan the groceries on the bottom shelf of
their shopping cart have been accused of shoplifting and had their careers
ruined. The store employees could have called the police.
I made it back to my van without further delay. The children
were awake. We moved on to our next adventure.
