World Changing

I was in Walmart yesterday, buying a pair of shoes if you must know, when after satisfying that need I wandered around the store a bit just to see what might catch my eye. Yes, I'm becoming a shopper. I'll stop. Don't want you lose my man card.

While checking out coffee I went on to look at tea. As I held a box of English Breakfast tea in my hands (which I like; I could be slowly losing my Irish card too) I saw a cup of tea displayed on the wrapper. Under the cup were the words 'Serving suggestion'.

Well, this changes everything. I can't tell you how many times in my life I was standing in the kitchen with a tea bag in hand and a whistling kettle on the stove, frantically thinking, "How can I make this work?" All I want is a cup of tea. But if I pour the hot water over the bag it will create a mess on the floor. If I hold the bag in my hand and add water I'll scald myself badly. What can I do?

I can put it all in a porcelain cup! I bet even a ceramic mug would do. No more burned hands for this old boy, I tell you what.

Seriously, though: does Twinings Tea actually believe that a picture of hot tea in a cup enhances the chance of a sale? Have people really been thinking, That's it! I can make my tea in a cup. Now I'll buy more.

Somebody isn't getting their money's worth out of their promotional budget if you ask me.

Not shopping with Mom

On our usual Sunday ride yesterday Mom and I stopped by Meijer. After exiting the car, I went to the cart return to grab a shopping buggy. I like to have one for Mom so she has something to steady herself with when I'm grabbing items or what not.

"What's that for?" she demanded.

I replied playfully, "We need it. We're going to shop until we run out of your money."

"Put it back!" she ordered, stopping us in our tracks.

We have fun.

Lidsville

I am going to throw my brother Phil under the bus today. Sorta. Because it's his fault I found myself in the predicament I was in this past Sunday, all over something I had never before considered.

He had mentioned that it might be a good idea to have cups with lids at the Shop for our coffee. We have our famous Newark Keurig up there for our hot beverages. Yet the old barn is a dirty place where things might fall into our drinks, or they may get tipped and such, so it would be a good idea to cover them. Fair enough; I know a good idea I can steal when I see it.

As it happened I was out with Mom this past Sunday and I stumbled onto paper cups with lids on sale. I began to pick them over. There were brown cups with images of steaming coffee on them. I set them aside to study red ones with vaguely Christmas, wintery scenes on them, also with what I am thinking was hot chocolate filling the cups. Another set was green with an evergreen theme. I found myself looking over those and other choices intently, trying decide which were best, making comparisons of this and that. That's when I heard a masculine voice in my head tell me, "Dude, you're shopping."

Guys don't shop. They go into a store and grab what they want and get out. We all know this. Still, I protested, "But the winter cups would be nice, what with winter coming up and all, while the green ones are kind of timeless."

"The brown ones are more like what you'd use for coffee," masculine voice opined, "Although the blue ones over there are sporty, with baseballs and footballs on them."

A second, even more masculine voice then said emphatically, "Guys, you're shopping!"

I coughed and took a package of the brown cups. They were properly generic, and that's all.

Angry about a meme

I'm not one to get angry easily. Well, all right, I am, if I'm not careful. So I try to be careful and control my temper. But sometimes I really want to just let it loose.

One such time involves a meme which I've seen a lot of lately. It pictures a woman with items in a shopping cart next to a man who is obviously a store employee. He is telling her, "The self checkout is available. She replies, "No thanks, I don't work here." The point, of course, being that we should not use self checkout lanes.

What I want to know is, how did those items get in her cart? They did because she was walking around the store choosing them. In short, she worked. At the store.

Unless you're willing to go to Sam Drucker's in Hooterville and tell a grocer what you want and have them collect all the items you ask for (then bag and total them up), don't get all high and mighty about not using self checkouts. They're just another option for folks to use.

Go stand in line if you want to; I don't care. But don't be so high and mighty about self checkout just to assuage your conscience. Because when you self shop, you're working at the store anyway.

Hypocritical nimrod.

Wal-Mart pictures: an Invasion of Privacy?

An Ypsilanti woman is upset that a picture of her mother shopping at a local store has appeared on a website dedicated to taking and posting photographs of shoppers at Wal-Mart. Needless to say, the most potentially embarrassing pictures are the ones most likely to appear on the site.

Melanie Wheeler doesn't like it, and who can blame her? It goes beyond the fact that the picture in question is her mother and into questions of privacy even in public areas. Why does anybody feel they have the right to take semi-random photos of those around them, to then post them on the Internet?

To be sure, many people wear clothes designed to draw attention to themselves. It is probably fair to say that those folks don't mind the practice. But that reason hardly excuses the process of actively seeking people who may be dressed, well, in less than complementary fashion and making them public on a worldwide stage. Especially if all they are doing is shopping.

That some people are easy targets for the gawkers of our land rather misses the point. We could debate forever about what type of clothing suits whom, and there's no doubt that fashion sense is lacking among many citizens (we are not intending to besmirch the woman in question here, as we have not and will not look up her picture). We also readily concede that many folks simply need to dress with greater care for themselves and with better regard for the fact that they will be in a public setting. Still, taking and publishing pictures of the unknowing and unwilling simply as an attempt at humor is, to say the least, merely childish and sophomoric. A decent respect for others, even if they do not appear to merit it, ought by itself to discourage the practice.

At the risk of sounding like your mother, would you want your mother treated that way? Then perhaps we as a society need to stop encouraging such behavior.