A matter of word choice

From a customer today who was looking to find individual servings of iced tea, but found only our quart and gallon sizes:

Flustered tea-drinker: "I looked over by the tea and I only saw the big jugs you guys have. That's it? No smaller sizes?"
Me: "Yes. That's it...just the big jugs."
FTD: "Yeah, I don't really need the big jugs right now."
Me: "Fair enough. Sorry to disappoint."


Full moons at ten this morning

Summer has officially settled over Boston with a heavy, muggy, thunderstormy sigh, and while it first inspires five-minute cooling breaks hiding in The Shipyard’s walk-in freezer, it also inspires a carefree sense of warm-weather abandon in the city’s residents. Case in point: early this morning, two tiny, blond-haired, blue-eyed, Dennis the Menace lookalike boys strolled past the front windows of the store with their nannies as I stood at my register. Some classic rock song that makes the rounds at bar mitzvahs and weddings everywhere was playing softly overhead and I absentmindedly bopped along, quietly tapping my fingers and watching the T trundle by while I waited for another customer. Suddenly, I realized that two Dennis the Menace butts were staring right back at me.

Just yesterday, I watched some teenager plant ubiquitous flowers around each of the trees near our store, sweating furiously as he planted those damn pansies in earnest for his seven bucks an hour. Today, I was watching two little boys pee all over them.

The nannies were surreptitiously glancing up and down the street like that camper who just spread a layer of toothpaste all over the camp toilet seats, and I realized that they were the ones who had suggested this venue for the boys to take a leak. Cars were whizzing by, pedestrians were maneuvering around them, and the whole bizarre thing seemed to last for an eternity.

Fast forward about a billion minutes, and I’m helping two pruny and fuzzy sweater-wrapped (in this heat!) grandmothers use the credit card touch screen while I bag slimy packets of smoked salmon and almond biscotti. They’re giggling away and chattering to each other, completely oblivious to this display in the window, ten feet to their right. Out of the corner of my eye, I note that the boys have now hiked up their mini cargo pants and the group has strolled right into the store. Clearly our bathroom ambiance doesn’t hold a candle to the great outdoors. I’m still hoping it was some kind of political statement about city maintenance in the not-so-humble suburb where The Shipyard makes its home.

Housekeeping: All you folks out there who are jonesin’ for a good scientific study on this site, to elevate this collection of tales to a medical/world-saving/most prestigious of the prestigious research journal level, your time has come. I will soon be unveiling an analysis of—wait for it—the categories of shopper, distinguished by their behavior at the register. (A very highfalutin' study paid for by your tax dollars and insistance on organic brown rice bread, naturally.) Are you a self-bagger? God, Allah and Chuck Norris bless you, I should give you all the Bed, Bath & Beyond coupons I just received in the mail. Daydreamer? Fine, I sympathize, but please wake the hell up for two minutes and press "no" for cash-back. If, however, you like watching your 32,437 items pile into an amusing likeness of the Leaning Tower of Pisa, and then adore following my every movement with a bemused twinkle in your eye as I bag every last bit of it, you may not want to tune in next week.