My top 10 things I hate about grocery stores, in no particular order:

1. People that decide they don't want that expensive steak after all and leave it there beside the crackers. I think that grocery stores hire people just to go around and pick up second-thought items.

2. People who go through the express lines with more than 10 items. We all have that express line compulsion to count the number of items the person ahead of you is checking out, so why bother? Instead they look all confused and mumble something like, "Oh my, I guess I have over the limit," and hold an item in their hands like they are thinking of putting it back.

3. People who block the aisle with their cart. As hard as I tried, I could not come up with a definitive demographic for this person. It seems to range from the old lady that seems abashed with the current state of dried pastas, to the pot-bellied middle aged man with his sunglasses on top of his baseball hat that is hiding his balding hair. You know the guy; he's the one with the keys jingling from his belt and a pickup truck taking up two spaces in the parking lot with a mean, fat, neglected dog in the back.

4. Those business types, scratchy nyloned, half-heeled, sashed middle-aged woman who leave their shopping carts in the middle of the parking lot. Yes, there is some guy there to grab your cart from the parking lot, there is also a place that you can go where they feed you, bathe you and wipe your ass. I suggest that retirement homes should rebrand themselves to include the more affluent middle-aged women in our society.

5. People who don't let you ahead of them in line if you only have one item.

6. People who don't know how to line up! I see this everywhere: from the grocery store to the coffee lines at Fanshawe. People spilling right out across the path of others. I wonder what it would take to have people form considerate lines? It makes me wonder about natural selection: after a million years of evolution, a process by which only the strongest, smartest and most adaptable rise to the top, this is it? This is the top of the chain? Oh man, we are doomed!

7. People who don't put that little bar thing across the conveyer belt allowing you to put your groceries down.

8. Parents who let their kids run amok in the aisles; stuffing stolen marshmallows into their mouths, whining about wanting the cereal with the colourful box, or a bag of those chocolate-like coated masses of innocuous goo with a thin layer of jam in them. So the middle-aged man with the baseball hat and sunglasses plops the kid back into his bulky, oversized, uncontrollable shopping cart that looks like a racecar. His puffy face gone all splotchy and red as he voices, "Stop it" in a low, mean, stern whisper. The same tone he uses on his neglected dog.

9. Cashiers who are so slow that they move in reverse! How many times have they rung through a stupid apple - you can't remember the number to punch in? Or holding up a yam and asking if this is a potato. "Ya, sort of," you reply. So this cashier is moving so slow that the new manager (you can always tell when a grocery store gets a new manager because all the products on the shelves have been moved around), opens up a new lane. Some guy fresh off a smoke break says, "Can I help the next customer please," and the scratchy nylon, mean-faced pursed-lip lady behind you jogs over to the new lane!

10. Those magazines that are displayed at the checkout counter. The ones with headlines like: Sexy hair in 10 minutes or less, or How to act laid back during a grease fire.

I wonder if grocery stores somehow reflect a pattern in human behaviour, some sort of physical representation of the collective human psyche? If so, I wonder what the canned meat aisle means?
Editorial opinions or comments expressed in this online edition of Interrobang newspaper reflect the views of the writer and are not those of the Interrobang or the Fanshawe Student Union. The Interrobang is published weekly by the Fanshawe Student Union at 1001 Fanshawe College Blvd., P.O. Box 7005, London, Ontario, N5Y 5R6 and distributed through the Fanshawe College community. Letters to the editor are welcome. All letters are subject to editing and should be emailed. All letters must be accompanied by contact information. Letters can also be submitted online by clicking here.