Patting myself on the back while wiping my nose

I decided not to be an ass­hole tonight.  It was hard– I’m Boston (area) born and bred, so being assertive, opin­ion­ated and ahem, self-oriented come nat­u­rally.  (As Ed the Gent can attest, there’s a rea­son the denizens of our fair Com­mon­wealth are known as Massholes.)

Any­way, I digress.  We were sup­posed to have a mas­sive ice storm today, you know, the kind that has all the fore­cast­ers going OMFG! BUY POWDERED MILK AND TEST THE GENERATORS! Of course, it didn’t hap­pen, and instead all we had was windy, raw, “g*dd*mn that’s cold!” rain.  Falling side­ways.  And occa­sion­ally, just for vari­ety, up.

After I’d ascer­tained that my var­i­ous bits would not fall off, and at worst, would just be chapped, I ven­tured bravely out­side, run­ning the 10 1/2 feet from the front porch to the car.  Once in the car, I turned on my seat heater, and drove the 5 miles to the super­mar­ket.  (Let me tell you, you should pony up the money for these babies if you live some­place cold, they will change your life.  Or even if you live some­place mod­er­ate, but you drive a lot.  Your back will thank you.  I only got mine because it came with the trac­tion con­trol, but boy, will I never live with­out hot toasted buns again…) (Wow, this is turn­ing into the most aside-laden post I’ve ever written.)

The super­mar­ket where I shop, the Roche Bros., is a local chain that is still family-owned.  Their prices run a lit­tle higher than the Shaws and Stop & Shops of the world, but in exchange, they have a real fish counter and a real butcher shop, a bak­ery that makes my favorite cookie in all the world, her­mits, a deli with one of those awe­some “I am not wait­ing in line, no way, no how” auto­matic order­ing kiosks, and the fresh­est pro­duce out­side of a Whole Foods.  Their butch­ers are happy to cut things to order, make spe­cial orders, and talk recipes and cook­ing tech­niques with you.  And there’s always at least two man­agers on, walk­ing around in their suits, doing things like fetch­ing carts from the park­ing lot, replen­ish­ing pro­duce bags, help­ing with bag­ging when it’s busy, and re-stocking when it’s busy.  It’s truly one of the best-managed super­mar­kets  I’ve ever patronized.

The other thing Roche Bros. does is NOT skimp on help.  You can always find some­one to help you, behind any of the coun­ters, in the pro­duce sec­tion, in any of the aisles.  Peo­ple will stop what they’re doing to help, to go ask, to go look some­thing up.  There are 20-ish check­out lanes, all of which are staffed on busy days.  (Although I am a food nerd and like to shop dur­ing off hours, like 8 p.m. on a Fri­day, or 8 a.m. on a Sun­day, so I can take my time.)  And the check­out clerks don’t ignore you, or spend time yakking with the bag­ger and tak­ing for­ever to get through your order.  They also have bag­gers, for every sin­gle reg­is­ter that’s open.  Yep, let me say that again.  There’s always a bag­ger.  Not only do the bag­gers bag, (and they bag well, they bag very well, I’ve never had smushed bread or bro­ken eggs) they push the cart back out to the car for you.

There’s no par­tic­u­lar rea­son for this aside from cus­tomer ser­vice– I mean, you just pushed a fill­ing and full cart all the way around the mar­ket– but it’s a nice ser­vice, espe­cially if you’re older, or less spry, or laden with squalling brats with your lit­tle chil­dren.  Most of the time, I’m fine with it– it’s what they get paid to do, so bet­ter to use their ser­vices and let them keep their jobs, right?  I always feel kind of medieval or some­thing, though, head­ing out to my car at the far­thest end of the lot (I need to get my exer­cise in some­how), being fol­lowed sev­eral steps behind by my ser­vant.  When we get to the car, they help load, then take the cart back to the lot.  (I guess this is an effec­tive way of get­ting the carts back, too.)  Except at Christ­mas time, they won’t take tips, either.

But in nasty weather like today?  I push my own cart.  Some of the bag­gers are younger folks with men­tal dis­abil­i­ties, or guys who look like they’re on work release, but for some rea­son, a lot of them are older Russ­ian and slavic women.  I feel like I’d be ask­ing my grandma to push my cart in the cold and wet for me, and I am already going to hell.  I don’t need to add more items to the list.  So tonight I said “no thanks,” and pushed my own cart.  Halfway back to the car, I was like “damn, I should have let her push the cart so at least I could use my umbrella.”  By the time I got back to the car, I was like “there is no way I am push­ing this thing all the way back to the store.”  But, since that would mean that one of the lit­tle lady bag­gers would have to come out and get the cart back, I swore, stomped in some pud­dles, and pushed the damn thing all the way back to the store.

Now I think I’m get­ting a cold.  So that’s a few points off my karma, right?