Monday, September 14, 2009

Grocery Store Annoyances

Don't know if I've mentioned this before, but I dislike grocery shopping ... intensely. It is, however, a necessity, so I shop.

Today I headed to one of the local provisioning establishments. All I needed were a few items, but I went while slightly hungry (or I wouldn't have bought anything at all) and spent more time than I'd planned at the store. A bit more money, too, but we won't go there.

Grocery stores tend to have 'background music', probably fine tuned to get you to buy more. The establishment I shopped at today is a national chain and has its own satellite radio station which plays over the speaker system.

Besides music, it has public service announcements from time to time to let the shoppers know what a wonderful company it is. Today's psa backfired, at least for me. "One year ago, Hurricane Ike tore through Galveston ..." and the rest of the psa was about how the grocery store company is partnering with some other group to rebuild Galveston.

Excuse me! Galveston wasn't the only place devasted by Ike!! Our communities were affected by the 'forgotten hurricane', Rita, in 2005 and now, even though the hurricane itself is remembered, the fact that more than just one limited area was affected is. I almost abandoned my cart and left the building.

Remember me commenting on how much I hate grocery shopping?

So I finished buying the groceries I needed and headed to checkout. No problems with that. The scanner worked. The total was right. I'd forgotten how much the bananas weighed, but that was no biggie. Then the clerk said, "We're running a fall promotion. (gave the details, said how much I'd already spent at said store, then said...) Keep up the good work!"

HUH?!?!

I'll spend as much as I darned well please wherever I want, and it won't be because some store clerk has been instructed to tell me that I'm doing "good work".

Should have abandoned my cart.

Wednesday, September 09, 2009

Skies and the GPS

I recently broke down and bought a GPS to help me find my way around when I move to wherever my next church is. Besides, I'm seriously directionally challenged, especially when I'm someplace new and, since I was headed into uncharted territory recently, figured I could use the assist.

It's a nice little GPS, not top of the line, not bottom of the barrel. Instruction manuals drive me nuts, so with just a little bit of reading under my belt, I jumped right in and began to figure things out. The first thing I did was spend about 30 minutes figuring out how to make the darned thing post in ENGLISH. Out of the box it seemed to believe that Italian was the language of the day. (Or was it Latin?)

After that, it was time to find the voice that would be least annoying. I think there were about 10 different voices to choose from, 5 female, 5 male. Now this was an important decision, so I took my time, listening to each of the voices several times and, finally, settled on Dave.

Recognizing that we tend to anthropomorphize much of the technology in our lives (or at least I do), next on the list was providing the little beastie with a name. And, no, it couldn't be Dave. The company provided that name and it didn't really seem to fit him. In just a wink, I was now beginning a budding relationship with Tommy.

I test drove Tommy on my recent trip to Ft. Worth, a real doozie since I was headed to some completely unfamiliar territory. Tommy didn't do too badly, except for that trip on the uncompleted toll road. Tommy kept wanting me to exit to the right ... on an elevated freeway with no exits. He kept saying, "in x-hundred, feet exit right" ... long pause ... "in x-hundred feet, exit right" ... long pause ... (you get the picture). This went on for about 20 minutes until there was finally a place to exit, and then I found myself in the middle of nowhere and hadn't the foggiest which direction to go.

But Tommy redeemed himself and navigated me through some interesting neighborhoods until he dropped me in front of this huge multi-acre facility and said, "You have reached your destination." NOT! Somewhere on that huge property was the building I was supposed to go to and I couldn't figure out where that was. I had to drive around the "block" with Tommy sitting there in stoic silence, condemning me for not acknowledging that we'd arrived by bringing the car to a stop and turning him off.

I've discovered that I like to torment Tommy, not that he can really be tormented, but I seem to hear a touch of frustration in his voice when I don't go precisely where he wants me to. He's not one of those REALLY annoying models that says, "Recalculating" each time you miss the turn. Instead, Tommy just comes up with the next exit or turn that will take you in the diretion he seems to think you need to go, and keeps on until he finally gets exasperated and suggests that you turn around at your earliest and safest convenience.

So, instead of keeping Tommy hidden away as I travel around known territory, I tweak his nose and torment him by heading to places I know 3-4 different ways to get there, and then take a route that's different from the one he offers. Teehee!

Of course, he has his own way of getting even. Whenever I drive long distances where Tommy doesn't have much to say between directions, he startles the heck out of me when it's time to turn or exit. So, if you're ever behind me on a long drive and see me jump, just ignore me. It's just Tommy out for revenge. I'm so glad he's an inanimate object!