The wrong side of the aisle...

This one’s been bugging me for a long time. Luckily for me, my wife does most of the grocery shopping in our home. Otherwise, I probably wouldn’t make it out of the store without a set of cuffs slapped onto my wrists. You see, there are many types of shoppers that piss me off. Some of them I can just fluff aside, and be on with my day. Others, however, deserve to be slapped, kicked, punched, and unnecessarily dragged throughout the store by their hair for all to see; similar to a champion buck hunter who proudly displays his kill. I like to call this particular shopper: The Wrong Side of the Aisle guy.

Living in the United States presents one the opportunity to live as freely as possible without causing harm to others. However, we still have our rules, and they should be carried out in a fashion that carries over into many avenues of life. For example, it’s illegal to just sit in the middle of a road. Obviously, this is for safety reasons, but it’s also to avoid being a pain in the ass that people have to avoid while driving. Similarly, we see this law carry over into the everyday social graces that are expected in something, like say, a shopping mall. No one sits down in the middle of a mall floor, and if they do, they are usually punished by a security guard, or sometimes a swift kick to the dome. However, for some reason, not all of these rules seem to carry over. In particular, the rule that we drive on the right side of the road, does not often translate into our everyday behavior.

I’ll use the grocery store to illustrate my point, but there are many other situations where this may apply: walking down the sidewalk, walking in the mall, and walking in the halls of a school. The grocery store, however, is the worst case scenario for me. Let me set the scene:

There I am walking down the aisle of my beloved Kroger store. I’m walking on the right side of the aisle, pushing my cart, looking at the shelves intently for my favorite canned food-Hormel Chili. As I approach the midway point in the aisle, I barely see a woman in the corner of my peripheral and I slam on the brakes just before bumping carts. Whoa, I think to myself, that was close. However, the woman has no regard for the fact that SHE almost caused a run-in with me. Instead, she babbles the words, “You betta whatcho self.”

Now, imagine you’re me. According to the rules of the road, we are to travel on the right side of the highway. Thus, common sense would inform us that we should probably walk on the right side of the aisle. After all, this is America. Yet, this woman finds me at fault for a near detrimental (she had a glass jar of pasta sauce balancing on top of her cart) accident, that could have been avoided had she been on the proper side of the aisle. Not only that, but she shoots me some sort of shopper’s warning about watching myself, leaving me to infer that if I don’t, she made do something drastic-like throw her pasta sauce at me.

My point is, if we take the time to use a little f’ing common sense, we would realize that applying known rules to relatively similar situations will ultimately make a better everyday experience. I shouldn’t have to get pissed when I go to Kroger. It’s a bright, noisy, fun-loving store with ridiculous deals on bacon. The last thing I want to do is watch myself because some ignoramus doesn’t know how to apply the rules of common courtesy.

everydayidiot@gmail.com