People in Paris 3: Fun and games at the supermarket

And in this post we will venture into the supermarket, a hotbed of insults, aggression and venom. 

a)    CHOOSE A TILL

I was at the supermarket one day, waiting at the till to pay. Not wishing to breathe down the neck of the person in front of me, I was standing a little way back. A man strode up, looked me up and down, and unceremoniously deposited his groceries on the till in front of me.

“Were you here?” he demanded.

“Well, yes,” I said. “But never mind. I’m not in a rush. You can go first.”

At which he flew into a wild rage.

“You must stand either at this till or at that till!” he shouted. “There’s no point in standing between two tills. How am I even supposed to know you are at the till?”

By this time, the cashier was ready to receive the next customer, but not sure which of us to serve first.

“Are you going to go?” the man demanded of me, indicating my purchases.

I resisted the urge to snatch the wine bottle from the till and break it on his face.

“Please,” I said, in the most charming tone I could muster, while lava boiled inside me. “After you.”

“No!” he bellowed. “If you were at the till then you must go first! But you must actually stand in the line! Go!”

So I pushed past him, paid for my purchases, bestowed my sweetest smile on the cashier and left without a backward glance at the man.

Yes, your mother told you that manners cost nothing, but sometimes they come at the cost of ruptured blood vessels.

b)      UNLOAD YOUR BASKET

Another time at the supermarket, the man in front of me deposited his basket on the counter but didn’t unload it, being completely engrossed in reading his emails on his phone. The cashier politely invited him to unload the basket.

“Yes, madame,” he told her in a syrupy, patience-of-a-saint tone. “I have every intention of doing so.” And he turned back to his phone and finished reading his email while the cashier tapped her manicured fingers on the vegetable scale. When he was good and ready, he shifted his basket to the end of the till so he could start unloading it, which automatically set the conveyor belt into action. He raised his hands from the basket and looked at it aghast as it sailed down towards the cashier.

“Yes, but I cannot unload it while the conveyor belt is moving, madame,” he informed her. She raised her eyes to heaven as she stopped the belt. He paid for his purchases and departed, phone to ear, with a charming, “Bonne journée, madame!”

c)       WHY PEOPLE DIE PREMATURELY

On yet another occasion, the cashier took a break from the growing queue of customers to help a man with a query.

“Excuse me, monsieur,” called out the woman at the front of the queue, “but you have customers to serve here.”

“Just a moment,” replied the cashier. “I just have to help this gentleman.”

“But that’s not right!” spluttered the woman second in the queue. “You can’t neglect your customers! Otherwise why even have a till open?”

“Then feel free to go to the other till,” replied the cashier most charmingly.

“No!” the woman burst out. “You can’t have so many customers and just one till open!”

Then the woman who was second in the queue said to the woman who was at the front, “May I go in front of you, madame? I have just a few things and I’m in a terrible rush.”

“Well, no, not really,” replied the other woman haughtily. “We’re all in a rush, you know. We all have things to do.”

The cashier served the two women, and as the second one headed for the door, he asked her, “Are you all right?”

“No, I’m not actually,” she called back over her shoulder. “I’m running late!” And she tapped her watch.

The cashier smiled cheerfully. “You know why people keep dying prematurely?” he called after her. “It’s because they get all stressed over little things.”

d)      BISCUITS

I dropped into the supermarket one evening to pick up some biscuits to take to work, because although people keep bringing an endless variety of teas and coffees into the staff room, to the point where there is no longer any space to put them, the importance of biscuits never seems to occur to anyone.

The cashier asked if I wanted a bag, and I said no, so he passed the biscuits to me.

“Ha ha!” sniggered the woman behind me in the queue. “Look how she snatches those biscuits!”

“Yes,” agreed the cashier gleefully, “she took them right from me!”

“They’re her biscuits!” shouted the woman.

“She wants them now!” gurgled the cashier. “She doesn’t want anyone else to touch her biscuits!”

They continued this banter for a bit, which I ignored at first, but after the joke had worn thin, I got irritated and said, “Actually, they’re not for me. I’m going to take them to work and share them with my colleagues.”

The woman completely ignored me. “They’re only hers!” she ploughed on.

“Yes!”  cackled the cashier. “Don’t touch her biscuits!”

So I gave them both my fakest smile and breezed off.

ANNEXE: WHERE’S THE PARTY?
Two things that didn't happen at the supermarket.

Fancy-dress parties are all well and good, but what are you doing wandering the streets of Paris at 11:00 on a Friday morning dressed as a vampire, an air hostess, or a clown with a Rubik’s cube around his waist with fake legs flopping over the front of it? At least the four Japanese girls dressed in girly sailor suits one Saturday night were obviously going to a party. 

And nothing can explain the man in his fifties who got on the metro wearing:

Black shoes, a cross between boots and sandals

Black knee-highs

Black satin hot pants

A silver cable-knit jumper

An academic cloak

A black hat resembling nothing so much as a mushroom.

He sat down demurely and out of his small ladies’ handbag he produced a diary, which he proceeded to leaf through for the next five minutes.