Never Again! And I mean it this time.

I hate a certain super center that is in every city across the country. I won't use it's real name but those of you who know me know which store I am referring to. There really is no nice why to say it. Simply put, I hate that store. Every time I go there I always say it will be my last. Well, this time I really mean it. I don't know what it is about the place. As soon as I pull into the parking lot I start to tense up. I can feel my mood shift to from "happy, happy" to "pissy, pissy". I have to psych myself up to even get through the door. I tell myself that I will have a great shopping experience but then I walk in. I feel I have to prepare myself for battle. The place is always a mad house, people are everywhere. You have to be on the defensive because you never know when you might get plowed down by crazed shopper who thinks they own the store. If you manage to find everything you need and make it to the check out line you have to wait forever. What is the point of having 30 cash registers if only 5 are open at any given time?! So any way, Saturday night Chip says he wants to go to this store. I look at him like he's lost his ever-loving mind. Surely he did not say what I thought he said. He's not a big fan of the super store either. "You want to go where?" I ask. "I heard they have $30 remote control helicopters." Now, I know he's nuts. "We can go to the book store." he says. It's was a classic bribe I know, but I readily accepted because who can say no to the book store.

We go to the book store first. There is nothing like a tasty cafe latte and book browsing to put me in a good mood. We finish and get back in the car. Secretly I am hoping Chip is so excited about his book and magazine purchases that he has forgotten about the helicopter. No such luck. We pull up to the store and shocker! It doesn't look that crowded. We even get a second row parking spot near the front door. I even said to Chip, "Maybe this won't be so bad." We decided since we were there we would pick up a few other things. So off we go. We managed to find everything we need without too much of a problem (except for the main thing we went there for, the helicopter). Feeling good about this visit we make our way to the check out. And here is when it started to go down hill. As always the lines were long. We only had about 5 items so we go to the self-check out lane. I think self-check outs are a wonderful thing. I use them all time. They are quite the time saver, if they are working. We wait our turn and get up to the monitor. We start to scan our items and all is working well. Then, I moved the bag! What happens when you move the bag you might ask? It screws up the system! It thinks you are trying to take your items without paying. We had to wait for assistance. And how many sales assistants do you think were working, monitoring about 6 self check out lanes. 1!!!! We waited so long for assistance that the machine eventually cleared itself. We began scanning again. Then we tried to scan the bottled water. It would not recognize the item. By this time I am in my classic huff-n-puff stage and Chip is getting frustrated not only with the machine but with me. Once again we had to wait for the one sales assistant to come over. The whole time I am muttering to myself "I hate this store". The sales assistant finally comes over and has to manually key in the item. It still wouldn't take. She had to do it several times and finally it went through. We, or should I say Chip, finally manages to get everything scanned in and payed for. I swear the whole process took over 15 minutes. We make it back to the car. Once inside we both take a deep breath. I look at him and I say, "I am never coming to this store again." Reflecting back, I have to ask myself if it was really that bad. We did manage to find everything we needed without too much trouble, and some of the issues with the self checkout were operator error. After all, I did move the bag before we were done. However, I have to also ask myself, is it worth the irritation and frustration I always seem to endure to go back to this store? After much thought I can honestly say the answer is no. I would rather drive down the street to a similar store and pay a little bit more. I will gladly leave this store to those who have a little more patience.