Sold by Weight

Last night, I cooked and served dinner (chicken pieces, wild rice, cauliflower with parmesan, salad) and then headed over to BJ's. At very least, I had promised to drop off some brownies this morning at the elementary school on the way to work as a favor to the PTA; traditionally the younger kids' families feed the fifth graders on Moving Up day. But of course I had a list of other things to get.

Besides some cereal, beans, oatmeal snack bars, and watermelon, I had a handful of perishables to get too. So I figured I'd start with the deli counter. Not a good call. There were four other carts ahead of me, and the one arthritic-looking employee who was serving up the cold cuts was doing it at glacial speed. So I left the cart and went around getting the meats and fish I needed. In so doing, I noticed that there were packages of pre-sliced roasted turkey, bologna, ham, and provolone in one of the cases. Sold! I left the miserable group of people in the deli department and headed for checkout.

The self-checkout lines usually work for me, and the lines were pretty short. When I was almost at the head of the line I grabbed a Diet Pepsi out of the small fridge next to the conveyor belt and drank about half of it. (Not all of it, because too much caffeine after dinner means we don't sleep much.) So I scanned all my items, one after the other, watching them head off merrily down the conveyor belt in turn.

The last item was the soda. It kept coming back, with the machine saying that the item couldn't be processed. Luckily I didn't have to turn the light on or look for anybody, because a young cheerful employee happened to be passing by. He flashed his magic BJ's access card at the scanner, and then the soda went bobbing down the belt. I looked at him quizzically. "The machine goes by weight, and the weight wasn't right. Happens all the time...shopping makes people thirsty." He answered my sheepish grin with a genuine broad smile.

Maybe there's some material there for a future Diet Pepsi commercial?