the food lion blues

I hate it when the only lines open at the grocery store are the express lane and the do-it-yourself lane. Something always seems to go wrong for me at those things, with one of the barcodes not scanning right or it constantly claiming that I haven't put something on the conveyer belt, and the guy whose job is just to stand there glowering and looking sullen has to come over, all sigh-y like and press some buttons and give me a look that says "what an idiot" before it doesn't work for him, and he gives me dirty looks while he pages Steve, and then some Steve, who's in a white shirt that's badly pressed with a tiny plastic name tag on the pocket and looks very harried rather than resentful, has to come over and do some black magic to make it actually work and before he runs off (literally runs) to some other grocery emergency he smiles at me very briefly and gives glowering guy a dark look which only makes glowering guy glare even more at me after Steve has left, as if daring me to do something else to make that crappy machine break, and then the groceries get all backed up on the belt and I have to stop to push them forward, and the lady with the perfect hair and high heels who's waiting behind me, even though there are two other open do-it-yourself lanes plus the express lane which she could actually use as she only has three items, is tapping her foot clickity-clickity-clickity impatiently. Bah!!!!