It is a well known fact that our country is currently in dire straights economically. There are many reasons for this from unchecked corporate spending to bad tax policies but I think one reason that is overlooked is the fact that shopping is a huge pain in the ass and stores never have what you want anyway. I don’t think a stimulus plan is going to do us much good when shopping for goods and services is about as easy as performing a root canal by going in through the ass… that is how an average shopping trip feels to me anyway.

Maybe I am not normal. It is true enough that I generally hate people and any time I find myself around others I am at about a seven of ten on the Abject Rage Scale (ARS for short). You put a bunch of them together and stick them in a store, my shit goes straight up to 11. So maybe it is just me and I have a problem.

On the other hand I don’t think I should have to feel like I am breaking through a defensive line to gain entry to the store because a family of five have taken it upon themselves to stop right in the middle of the entry way and form a wall as if they were re-enacting the Hands Across America so that ‘Dad’ can get a shopping basket. It is also not my fault that I then have the time to ponder the fact that the couple’s misbegotten offspring look nothing at all like ‘Dad’ and further speculate that perhaps the mail man or the manager at Mom’s night job might need to pay better attention to those safe sex PSAs.

So once you manage to get into the store, things are no better. I think that people get confused when they get into a store and are somehow under the impression that there is some strictly enforced speed limit or that they have a bomb down their pants that will explode if they go any faster than a baby can crawl. I go into the store and am routinely stuck behind people walking as if not only do they have nowhere to go, but it might kill them if they get there before two the next afternoon. I have seen elderly morning mall walkers move faster than most of my fellow consumers at the store.

So if you go and you need help finding something or need something out of a case you may have better luck looking for the corpse of Jimmy Hoffa than for a sales associate. If ‘helping me buy my shit‘ is in the job description it must be Klingon for ‘have a conversation with your co-workers about who you plowed last night.‘ I can appreciate that it is the first tail you have gotten since never but I really do need to get to the rest of my day.

Again I don’t think it is too much to go to a store and have help by paid employees when I ask for it as opposed to whenever they damn well feel like it. I understand being busy, I really do. I have worked retail for years and years in the past and I know what it is like to be slammed when 18 people ask inane questions and get pissed when you can’t sprout a dozen arms and heads like some kind of Hindu god and do everything at once. But that being said, if I am the only one around and you’ve made eye contact with me four times and are still talking about how you feel itchy down  stairs and is it normal to look like you have a bunch of pimples down there, then you are an asshole. I also probably don’t want you handling any of my merchandise now that I think about it.

Then you get to the register and there is one line open to accommodate the touring cast of Rent mingled with an entire trailer park worth of freaks who would be at home traveling with the Jim Rose Circus. They don’t open another line and if they do getting to it becomes a bloodsport that would make Kimbo Slice make pudding in his pants and scream like a little girl with a skinned knee. And that is all just if they HAVE what you want in the first place.

I don’t know why it is so hard to find black cargo pants or large plain black t-shirts but after the past couple of days of searching I am thinking I would have had a better chance finding Mt Ararat. Store after store I found 4XL t-shirts and 44 32 pants that would have been perfect if I needed to wear them and host a three ring circus on my body, but nothing for a reasonably sized person at all.  Now I recognize that there are larger people out there and there is nothing wrong with that, but when I go into Walmart it is not unreasonable to find a pair of black cargos in 36 3o.

I get no joy going over to the shoe section either. I wear a size 13, which I recognize is large, but one would think that if the average Walmart shopper has a waist you could land aircraft on, that shopper might have equivalently large feet. No, apparently they all wear size five. There is some sort of reverse Barbie doll business going on there that I really don’t understand. A person that large shouldn’t be able to stay upright on such a small foundation. I don’t know much about physics and weight ratios but I’ve tried to balance an Apple on a straw stuck in it and it doesn’t pan out.

I just don’t understand how it can be so hard to find simple things like black pants. Of course if I was looking for black sweat pants or a large gray hoodie I would be equally boned. Any specific item I am  looking for is almost guaranteed to fail to exist altogether when I go to the store for it specifically and need to have it some time in the next 72 hours. I can’t imagine this is just me, although if it is, it would make a decent amount of sense when compared to other aspects of my life.

I really wish I could accomplish more shopping online but some things, like groceries, are just not reasonably purchased over the internets (there may be a moratorium on that term now that Bush is gone, but I still think it is funny), and even when you do manage to find what you need there you have to contend with UPS, a business who seem to have fucking consumers in the ass built right into their mission statement. In the future, if terrorists must hijack planes, I hope they choose UPS delivery planes because if a building or occupied area are the destination, they will never get there until a day after they are supposed to if at all.

Maybe I am just a bitter prick who hates everything and everyone but I have to believe that if people gathered together to shop didn’t become slightly less intelligent, quick, and agile than Romero’s mall zombies then I would be a lot more mellow. Is it really too much to ask to not have every shopping experience be tantamount to being waterboarded while anally raped by a syphilis infected monkey? Apparently.