The nearest out-of-town Aldi grocery stores are 90 mintes away in Roseville, and 60 minutes away in Burton - actually, just across Center Road on the border with Flint where I don't have to go anymore unless I want to visit my anti-social cat lady sister's grave site, and leave her a can of Super Supper. But I digress.
Visiting the Aldi's in Fort Gratiot Township, then, is an allowable exception to our no shopping in St. Clair County rule.
Let's rewind to sometime in late October. The World Series wasn't over yet, and it was before Halloween. I went there to get a few things that are absolute necessities here at Blogger Central: orange juice, roll sausage, and fancy chocolate coated butter cookies, like Petit Ecoliers, only cheaper. At the end of a day of running; to the recycle center, the Salvation Army to donate some stuff -- yes, I still go there -- and the mall to use the Internet to do things I can't do here, like get Facebook to open in less than ten minutes. I was tired, didn't feel good, and was backed into the corner of being forced to spend money in St. Clair County. All the ingredients for classic drama.
When I go shopping, I don't talk to the checkers. I have nothing to say to them - or actually, to anyone in Wonderful St. Clair County. If I ignore them, they usually get the message. Not this time. The exchange, if my memory serves me well -- and it always does -- went something like this:
Aldi Girl: "Hello, how are you?"
Me. Nothing.
Aldi Girl, after a few seconds of silence: "Ooooooo-kay . . . "
Aldi Girl, with the character and personality of a chipmunk on steroids, could have let it drop there, but didn't. She scanned my last item and observed, loudly enough for everyone else in line to hear her: "Well, at least one of us is having a good day . . . "
I'm sure the Aldi training manuals don't have a chapter on how to bait and tease the customer in a busy checkout line, provoke a confrontation until finally something has to be said. So she didn't learn how there.
And something was said, by me. Look, I told Ms. Chipmunk, I don't want to talk to you, I don't feel good, I'm tired, and why can't I just pay for my stuff and go? Do they teach you how to pick fights with customers? I said some other things that might reveal the location of Blogger Central, and won't include them here. But you get the point.
All of this went into the blog post Drafts folder, and stayed there until my next visit to this Aldi's I needed a couple things, and more knockoff Petit Ecoliers. Ms. Chipmunk had just opened a new check lane and, as one would poke a sleeping grizzly bear, I got in it. Just to see what might happen, you understand . . . if she can do it, why not me?
No, I don't want to talk to you, Little Miss Chipmunk Snowflake with the K.D. Lang hairdo. If I ever did, I definitely don't want to now. And what exactly, besides the 80s hairstyle that comes directly from the pages of your parents' high school yearbook, makes you so special that I would want to talk to you?
Once again, the Survey Generation is offering me an opportunity to make my voice heard. I'm thinking about it.
I haven't seen Kroger Girl in a long time, and I'll never have to deal with Staples Girl again. But Burton is too far a drive for chocolate butter cookies, and I know I'll meet up with Aldi Girl again someday. You The Reader will be the first to find out what happens. I've been putting up with bullshit like this all my life, and I'll be god-damned if I'm going to put up with it coming from some insolent little snowflakes almost young enough to be my grandchildren. And this is the part I still don't get: at the Burton Aldi's, across the street from the place where it's still not safe to drink the water, where all that's left are ghetto grocery stores with bars on the windows, and they're closing schools, everyone's nice. They have every reason to hate themselves and cop an attitude, and take out their self-loathing on customers, simply because they live where they do. But they don't. Being unfavorably compared to Flint, now that would (should) make anyone from Wonderful Port Huron feel offended.
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