Singing in line
My sympathies are extended to any employee in retail that lives with a soundtrack. Background music, not of their choosing. My sons are unable to handle some of the local FM radio stations after spending part of their waking hours each day listening, over and over again, to the same insipid choice of songs that seems to beat one’s soul into pablum. And I’ve just returned from grocery shopping, where I ended up singing along to a cover of a Roger Whittaker song.
I should have known better, but with a beautiful day (weatherwise) in the making, a holiday, I decided to invest in some steaks for a late afternoon barbecue session. We have an oddball law in Quebec that allows the big grocery stores to stay open on a holiday as long as they reduce staff to the crippled level. Four on the floor. A law that is ignored in practice (I have insider info on this one), where the managers are dressed in mufti, there is a set dance of younger employees moving about the aisles, ready to hide from “the inspectors”, and where shift changes are carefully timed to keep as many people in the checkouts as possible. Still, shopping during a holiday is a good reason to purchase a personal music player.
The lineup for the three open checkouts stretched across the store and up along the frozen food aisle. There were the usual miscreants, trying to jump the queue. There was the nun, dressed all in white except for a black cane (odd coordination of non-colours). The woman with the very young child, learning to walk, that had to keep dodging carts pushed by other children with no sense of driving order. The people that looked at the line, shook their heads, mumbled something about the end of the world as they knew it, and then looked for a shorter wait time (there wasn’t one). And the people like me, docile, accepting the inevitable wait and singing along with the background music. I’d like to say we were in harmony, but Limbo is a better way of explaining the state of the stranded singing shopper.
I left the store after an hour in line, but we do have steak for supper. If anyone is left at home…
