Don’t cry over stolen milk
My life of crime started innocently, much like Jean Valjean in “Les Misérables.” It started with the essentials, with milk instead of bread.
The fictional Valjean served a 19-year prison sentence for stealing a loaf of bread to feed his sister. Sure, Victor Hugo’s book gets a bit more complicated after that. The book is 1,488 pages. Abridged! In French! Mon Dieu!
My tale begins at the market, too. I wandered around the produce aisle, picking up bags of apples, oranges, radishes, cucumbers, celery and grapes.
When you have a veritable cornucopia of fruits and veggies, the last thing you want to see is the self-checkout Line. One lone cashier handled a long line of customers, but the self-checkout lines were moving much more swiftly – until I got there.
Brace yourself. We’re getting into Old Man Rant territory. Any anti-technological rant makes me feel like Methuselah or Grandpa Simpson, but I can be hip. Is hip still a thing?
At the self-checkout Line, I had to scroll through virtual pages and pages of apples before I found the ones in my basket. Each apple had a pleasing photograph. They were all stacked up in red, green and gold (the picture of the Honeycrisp apples was so vibrant it could have been the centerfold in Orchard magazine).
I lucked out with the bag of oranges. The red mesh bag of navel oranges had a label with a UPC code.
Side note: I find it fascinating that a series of skinny and fat lines mixed together can tell the computer that the item is $1.99 a pound. Don’t get me started on QR codes. They look like those 3D puzzles from the ’80s. If you stare at them long enough, you’ll see a giraffe on the veldt.
But I digress, like I do. I scanned all of the items except one. A half-pint of chocolate milk that I was going to give to my nephew Connor. There were no fat or skinny lines on the bottle. I typed chocolate into the computer and every chocolate thing in the store came up: nuts, raisins, cranberries, cherries, trail mix. Even though I looked like I was coming back from harvest, with all of my fruits and veggies, I was staring down at pictures of Snickers and Milky Way bars. No closer to purchasing the final item in my basket.
I hit cancel and keyed in the word milk into the computer. Nothing came up.
I began flailing my arms around to get the attention of an actual employee of the store, but, as far as I could see, the customers were doing all of the work. Finally, I saw a woman in a green vest and a name badge. I waved toward her, and she turned around and went into the office.
Exasperated, I gave up with a sigh and a few choice curse words. I threw the milk into my bag, paid for everything else and walked out.