Fried-ay: Ceasar Salads, Scratch Tickets, and Self Checkouts…
Guys, guys, GUYS!!! It’s Friday, which means it’s Fried-ay, which means it’s time for me to load up the “Pop Punk Powerhouses” playlist (the single best Spotify playlist in existence) and tear through a laundry list of complaints and uninspired concepts.
For those unfamiliar, Fried-ay is that “little thing I’ve been working on.” It’s a portal into the mind of someone who doesn’t believe it’s necessary to wash jeans more than once over a two-week span if there is no considerable condiment stains. It’s a blog written every week by a guy who just realized Ceasar salads were Italian (Julius Ceasar was a former dictator of Rome; Rome’s in Italy).
Speaking of things I just realized, the other day I was pumping gas when I heard a click. I quickly released the handle, but to my surprise, the nozzle kept guzzling regular into my gas tank. It was in this moment that I determined you could lock the handle and continue to pump gas hands-free. I’ve been pumping gas for nearly a decade and literally just realized this. Carry on…
Scratch ticket people are the fucking worst. Every time I see some degenerate in front of me in line at the convenience store, I gauge his every move. What I’m looking for is a.) what he or she carrying to the register and b.) if his weight is distributed to the balls of his feet.
If he/she has nothing in their hands, that’s a bad sign; if their weight is placed forward and you can see the heel of their shoe slightly lift off the flooring, you’re pretty much doomed. It’s the tell-tale sign “the lean” is coming. The Lean is when someone does that weird lean/doggystyle setup over the counter in order to increase their vantage point of the scratch ticket selection.
From there, you know you’re in for at least an additional 45-second wait in line, which begs the question: Should convenience stores—and everywhere, for that matter—institute shot clocks at their registers?
For example, if I’m on break, I need to get in and get out. I don’t have time to stand groggily as Susan prods the clerk over whether they carry some shitty imported craft beer because she’d “seen it here before.”
On that note, the “11/12 Items in the 10 Items or Less Line” people need to be euthanized. I was behind some guy yesterday with a curiously high number of items at Walmart. After counting, I noticed he had 13 items.
You can’t fucking do that. This isn’t Europe—there are rules here. If you have more than 10 items, you don’t have less than 10 items, in which case, you go to the other line.
That applies to all the jackasses that bring a full cart through the self-checkout as well. The self-checkout is essentially an extension of the 10 items or less line, but without the cashier asking you to donate $5 to some charity.
-Joey Boats (@joey_boats)