12 Items or less means 12 ITEMS OR LESS!

My lovely wife wonders why I dont' like grocery shopping by myself.  I think it's because she's not there to keep me in on the straight and narrow. 

You see, I've been accused of having a short fuse, but my recovery time is pretty fast.  I can absolutely come unglued on some pinhead who cuts me off in traffic, but be fine a block later.   At work, on the road, in life in general, I have very little tolerance for stupid people, but I just let it out and I'm fine.

Not in the grocery line - there it's more of a slow burn.

I found myself in the 12 items or less line at the Superstore on Vic East yesterday with three (yes, three) items.  The lady in front of me looked like she had more than 12 items in her basket.  I tried to count but was thwarted by her savvy layering of her items.  Damn, "The Layerer" strikes again - making it impossible to count items in the 12 Items or Less line.   The people in front of her had well over 26 items - I really had to work hard on keeping my internal dialogue internal, especially since I just wanted to put my items down, walk over and very politely bitch-slap them in the head with their organic broccoli. 

As much as it would have made me happy to do that, I just stood there, hoping that they'd see my look of disdain.  They tried to joke that "since there was two of them, they each had less than 12 items, hee hee hee, aren't we cute and funny idiot hippies?"

LOOK - did you fail remedial math when you went to school?  26 divided by 2 is 13 - still more than the 12 items or less.  Regardless, since you're there already and you're making me wait - pay for your crap and get out of my sight - you annoy me.  

Then it's time for the savvy layerer to pay for her purchase.  When she unloads her basket, there are 13 items.  Yep - 13 items in the 12 items or less line.  When I asked her very politely, "Hey, dingbat, what the hell?  You have too many items to be in this line!", she said that she counted her two grapefruits as one item.

???

I asked her what the hell she meant by she counted her two grapefruits as one item, she replied with "Well, they're both grapefruit so they're one item."

???

So I said, "So if I buy a new car, I should get two of the identical car as they'd be one item, correct?"  She looked at me and smiled a smile that I think was meant to be sweet, but was actually more cloying and was about to say something that I could have cared less about and I said " How many grapefruit are there there?"  

"Two."

"What will your reciept have on it when it says: Grapefruit: Quantity...?"

"Two."

"So therefore you have...how many grapefruits?"

"Two, but they count as one."

With a disgusted shake of my head and a dismissive wave of my hand, I basically gave the anarchist a look that said since you're there already and you're making me wait, pay for your crap and get out of my sight - you annoy me.

My wife usually stops me from engaging in chitchat with idiots to help keep my blood pressure down - she usually steers me to line that should have a sign that reads:

"IRRITABLE MIDDLE AGED MEN WITH NO TOLERANCE FOR MORONS WHO CAN'T COUNT."