I placed my groceries on the conveyor belt and sighed. After a long day at work, I was almost home.
The cashier finished checking the people in front of me, but, as I pushed forward she said, “Give me a minute. I have a mess to clean.”
I looked to where she went, under the end of the conveyor, where you stashes the basket you carry by hand. The basket that had been stowed there was oozing eggs. The cashier made three trips to and fro, getting more paper towels and spray cleaner. She grumbled a little about people who don’t mention problems and leave messes for other people to clean and I commiserated.
I didn’t have many items, and I was checked out quickly, with two paper bags in the shopping cart. Portland is plastic bag free. I parked the cart and carried my bags to my car, looking back to make sure I hadn’t left anything behind. Nope. I was good to go.
When I got home, I quickly tossed the frozen berries into the freezer and the yogurt into the fridge, then took Lucy for our afternoon constitutional. I would unpack the rest of the groceries when we got home.
I fed Lucy when we got home, then started unpacking the rest. It went a little faster that I expected, then poured myself a glass of mineral water. It had reached 72ºF in Portland!
I don;t know what caused the niggle in my brain. But something called me back to the fridge. Hey, where were my lemons? I pulled out my receipt and sure enough they were on there, but they weren’t in my fridge. Weird. I looked over the receipt once more. Holy cow! Two other items on the receipt were missing: celery and carrots.
The grand total was just over five dollars worth of veggies, but the pain in my life was huge. I was in no mood to run back to the store (though I did check the car, just in case.) So, I took the only action I could – I sent an email using the comments form on the store’s website. A feeble effort, but I let them know that it wasn’t the value of the items, it was the value of my time that was the bigger loss.
In the aftermath, I thought about the fact that, driving home, I’d been thinking over the fact that I didn’t really have a good Slice of Life story. Ha! I thought, too, about the cashier, who had complained about people not doing the right thing. Ha! Ha! Life sure is full of irony, isn’t it.
booksandbassets 
Oh, I have to say that is one of the things that always gets to me – leaving items behind (especially if you are not the one doing the bagging) or smooshed bread or strawberries because my wonderful husband is not close to being an expert bagger, and sometimes cans and such are placed on top of perishables! Anyway, Adrienne, I enjoyed your post because it is one of life’s experiences we all have – the little ironies – you did get a great “slice” out of it!
Yes, irony sneaks in all the time!
Life (or the store) didn’t give you lemons this time! Sorry- just had to make that play on words. Your slice makes me think about how everyone has stuff going on; big stuff, little stuff, stuff that no one else will ever know about.
Sometimes life just wants to shove some kinks into our daily grind ( and give us our topic for SOL)!! I hope it goes more smoothly next time at the grocery store.
What a shame, but a good reminder that life is full of surprises, some good, some bad. 72 degrees in Portland? Wow! It feels more like fall here in PA.
You made “lemonade” without your lemons, Adrienne, magic! It is annoying to arrive home to notice something is missed. You told it well!
That’s the worst feeling! I suppose breaking the routine distracted the poor cashier from giving you your produce…I hope you get your money back!
Did you get a response?
Not yet.
Great story we probably all can relate to experiencing in some form or another. I loved how you squeezed in so casually about Portland being plastic bag free! Way to go, Portland! I hope you get a response from the store!
I hope that you get a response from the store, too! Irritating things like that happen to all of us, unfortunately, so we can all relate to the annoyance. But the irritating things do make good stories! 🙂 ~JudyK
As a connoisseur of irony, I found this slice delicious. Except for the “oozing eggs” — that bit made me cringe 🙂
I don;t like eggs and could smell them a bit. It made me a little woozy in real life, so I opted to leave it out of the slice.