Shopping Etiquette: I'm Talking to You, Drunk Guy on the Motorized Cart

When you prepare for your weekly - or monthly, or even yearly - grocery-shopping trip, you need to remember that you are not the only person who will be in the store. This is particularly true if you plan visit the grocery store on a Saturday morning. If you don't realize that half of your state, city, town or village goes to that store on that day, you're not paying attention.

If we all work together, we can get out of the store alive - or, at the very least, without going nuts and beating each other senseless with cream of mushroom soup.

There are a few specific behaviors that, when curbed, will make the shopping experience less torturous. If you recognize one or more of these tendencies in yourself, rest assured that the solution is at hand. You, too, can finish your grocery shopping without suffering the wrath of your fellow patrons.

Drunk Driving on the Motorized Cart
Riding the motorized shopping cart is much like driving your car: if you can't keep the thing in a straight line, you need to step away from it and get around on foot. Weaving is fine if you're trying to avoid the gaggle of girls in front of the candy display, but it's not okay I'm the only person on that aisle. Sometimes I would swear that you're gunning for me, people. This is not Human Bowling. This is serious business. So please, keep your cart under control.

And another thing: honking the little horn isn't going to make me move any faster. I'm already going at top speed because I hate grocery shopping. I want to get out of here as fast as possible - before you see me standing by the frozen turkeys and decide to mow me down before I grab the last one.

Shrieking Children
If you can't leave your children at home on shopping day, you should at least teach them how to behave in public. I'm not talking about the infants who cry because they're hungry, tired, or sick. I'm not talking about the toddlers who start whining because their little legs are exhausted and their nap times passed two hours ago. Rather, I'm talking about the school-aged kids who, for some reason, think that it's cool to yell and shriek as loudly as they can.

That is one of the world's most annoying sounds. I'm pretty sure that it's forbidden in the Geneva Convention. If there is no good reason for a child to make ear-shattering noises (as in: nobody is attempting a kidnapping), he or she should be stopped as soon as possible after the insanity begins.

If grocery-store managers were smart, they would install vending machines on every aisle and sell disposable earplugs. They'd make more selling those on Saturday mornings than they do selling condoms on Friday nights. (In fact: they should also dispense condoms on every endcap. Hearing children scream, whine and wail will boost sales.)

Holding Up the Checkout Line
There are several good reasons to hold up the checkout line. Paying in cash is, despite what the Visa commercials imply, a perfectly-acceptable delay. But paying a two-hundred-dollar grocery bill with ones and socks full of change is not. Please take your piggy bank's contents to the Coin Star machine.

Generally speaking, it's okay to hold up the line when you're shopping with coupons. I'm all for saving money, especially if I manage to find a grocery store that still offers double or triple coupon days. But please: when you're at home, writing your grocery list, go ahead and make sure that the coupons aren't expired. No cashier on this planet is going to accept a ten-cent-off coupon that expired eight years ago. Especially when the company no longer makes that product. This is particularly true when the product was removed from store shelves because scientists linked its consumption to fingernail tumors.

And if you don't agree with the cash register's stated price on an item, by all means hold up the line to straighten out that problem. As long as you don't grab the disposable Bics from the "impulse" shelf and set the conveyor belt on fire, you're probably not overreacting or creating a scene.

Sampling the Goods
If the store is offering free samples, then take all you want. I don't really care if you eat one or eighteen pieces of smoked sausage. Some will say that it's rude to take more than your "fair share," though, so try to be reasonable. Leave some of those yummy pork byproducts and preservatives for somebody else, will you?

But some things are not meant to be sampled. Grazing in the produce section is just gross. I wash my grapes when I get them home anyway, but it's still sort of nasty to think about how many fingers have been on that bunch. This is particularly disgusting during cold and flu season, which is upon us right now. Please, please, pretty please, look with your eyes and not your hands.

And yes: I realize that the grapes were touched by human hands before they even reached the store. That's a distant thought, though. I'm not standing there, watching the field worker snot up the produce. But when I'm in the store, I see the shopper who hacks and coughs all over his hands, then paws through several bunches of grapes before settling on a "good" bunch. If it's in my sight, it's not going to leave my mind - not even with brain bleach.

Blocking the Aisles
Most grocery stores are not well designed. You cannot always fit two carts on the same aisle, meaning that somebody must bail out so that the other shopper can reach the potato chips. But even with this little annoyance, we're all much better off if we try not to block the aisles.

When you meet up with an old high-school buddy, exchange e-mail addresses and find each other's MySpace pages. Don't stand in the middle of the aisle, with your cart jutting out at an angle, and yak about the time that you stole the principal's toupee.

If there are several people in front of the dairy case, waiting for them to finish is of course the polite thing to do. It's not nice to elbow somebody's grandma out of the way so that you can pick up your half and half. But please, don't block all of the chocolate milk. Some of us need the sugar rush just to get through this miserable shopping trip: denying us access might make us crazy.

Until my local grocery store offers a delivery service, I'll be out and about every Saturday morning. Let's try to be courteous to one another while we're sharing the store: it's easier and faster than the alternative.