Grocery Shopping

I went to the grocery store earlier today. The one and only supermarket we have in our town of 180,000 people. It's usually a crowded place, and today was no exception. I got the few things I needed and headed to the cash register. Thankfully, they almost always have one line that is designated "no carts". I had a basket of less than 10 items, so I waited in that line. There were three people in front of me. Well, four, if you count the lady who carried two papayas to the bagging area and shouted for the cashier to check her out next. "I ONLY HAVE TWO. CAN YOU SEE? I ONLY HAVE TWO." Crazy old bat, waving her papayas around in the air. Like she just don't care.

It was probably only a five minute wait, and I was entertained by the cute baby in line in front of me. I mean, she was with her parents. But now I have a vision of a 9 month old in a jilbab carrying a basket of groceries. It's pretty funny.... Speaking of which, I did get rammed from behind by a three year old with a shopping cart, because some parents think it's acceptable to let their kids do whatever they want. The mother only laughed at me. Even after I gave her the death look that I generally reserve for really naughty students.

Anyways, back to the cashier. She rang up all my items. But the last one was giving her problems. She could scan the bar code, but for some reason, the system wasn't reading it. It was just packets of dried ginger to make hot drinks with. She entered the code manually. Still nothing. So she called over a security guard and asked him to go write down the number. She bagged all my other items, but the guard wasn't back yet. So she asked me to stand at the end of the conveyor belt while she rang up everyone in line behind me.

TEN MINUTES LATER, the security guard came back and said he couldn't find where I'd gotten the stuff from (this store is not THAT big). So I offered to go show him. We finally made it to the correct aisle (after tripping over one small child and getting hit by an old lady's shopping cart). "Oh, so THAT'S where you got it from!" Yes, with all of the other ginger based drinks located in the only hot beverages aisle in the entire store. He wrote down the code on his hand with a pen, and we headed back to the cash register.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, the cashier was ringing up people who weren't even in line yet when I had checked out. We had to wait for her to finish ringing up someone who thought it would be cool to stuff FOUR baskets with groceries in order to avoid the long cart checkout line and then pay with a credit card for which the processing machine was located two registers away from ours.

Once that ordeal was finally over, the guard showed the writing on his hand to the cashier, who tried to enter it into the cash register FIVE times. The same number. Over and over. Still nothing.

So she turned to me and said with her best smile, "Sorry, you can't buy this."

And this is why I love/hate grocery shopping in Indonesia.