The joy of shopping

One benefit of living out in the middle of New Jersey is the availability of bulk items at wonderfully-reasonable prices. Unfortunately, sometimes all it takes is a couple of company employees to ruin the otherwise fun experience.

So earlier today, I arrived at one of these places - let's call it SuckCo - to do pick up a few quick things. The doors to the place were wide open, people streaming in and out. Therefore, I assumed that I, too, could enter the store to do some shopping as per the privileges inherent in my $50 a year membership.



As I walked in, confidently flashing my membership card, I was stopped in the doorway by an ugly, middle-aged, bitter-looking lady with mullet hair and eyeglasses that went out in the seventies.

"You can't come in," she bluntly informed me.

"Why not?" I countered. "The store appears to be open."

Well that's where I was wrong. You see, just a few weeks earlier, I had downgraded my membership from "executive" to regular old gold. The executive membership cost more, and I decided it wasn't worth keeping it around. Anyway, I didn't think this switch would make one difference in my life until the bitch in the doorway pointed towards the teeny, tiny sign posted on the side wall that explained the store's hours of operation. Apparently, SuckCo is all about invoking the caste system, because meager gold members like me are not allowed to enter the store until 11:00am daily, while executive members can enter as early as 10:00.

I explained to the door guard, politely at first, that I had just recently downgraded my membership and hadn't realized that by switching to gold, I'd be altering the approved timing of my store entry.

"Here, take my card," I had urged her. "You can see for yourself that I just switched over. So what do you say? Could you please help me out this one time and let me in so that I don't have to spend the next 45 minutes standing in the doorway?"

I thought this was a pleasant, simple enough request, but apparently I rubbed this woman the wrong way, because the next thing you know, she was calling for backup in the form of a similarly-dressed, outdated, middle-aged hag. Great.

Since the polite approach hadn't worked on the first woman, I figured there was no way it would win over her cohort. So I tried the not so nice approach, something along the lines of "Are you telling me that you're really going to make me stand here, wasting my time, for the next 45 minutes over an innocent mistake on my part?"

"There's nothing we can do," the second lady-ogre informed me.

"Sure there is. You can step aside and let me into the store."

"No, we can't do that," said the first ogre, arms folded in stubborn fury. "If we let you do it, then we'd have to let everyone do it."

"But there's nobody else here."

Actually, that wasn't true. There was a young mother holding a child a couple of paces back, hovering about nervously while awaiting the outcome of my entry crusade. I suppose, she, too, had fallen from Brahmin status and had made the same mistake of not noting the revised entry-time her new class afforded her.

Still, the situation was getting out of hand. There you had two women working furiously to achieve the goal of keeping me, this other woman and her 8-month-old son out of a space the size of a warehouse. I could've hung my head, walked back out to my car, and waited, or driven away in disgust. But I didn't do that. No, I held my ground. I stood there, smack in the center of the doorway, shifting my gaze back and forth so as to make as much eye contact with both women as possible.

Eventually, one of them left to go back to whatever it is she actually does, leaving the original orge to guard the doorway with every passionate bone in her body.

I decided to sing. After all, I was bored, and a little cold - why not make myself feel better? The doorway bitch glared at me and the woman with the baby started slowly backing away.

A few minutes passed, and at 10:30, a shift change occurred. As a young, agreeable-looking fellow walked over to relieve the doorway bitch of her post, the doorway bitch turned to him and said "watch out for that one; she's trying to get in before 11:00" - as in, "watch out for that psycho, she's trying to break into the vault and steal all the diamonds."

As soon as she walked away, I turned to the guy and explained the situation: I had recently switched my membership, was unaware that my new status restricted my entry time, and could I please be spared the aggravation of standing in a doorway, wasting my time?

Thankfully, this guy was a bit less hung up on the rules. He scanned the area to make sure that the doorway bitch was nowhere to be seen, then motioned for me and the woman with the baby (who had suddenly come back into the picture ) to come in.

"Thank you," I said. He nodded to let me know that he understood, and I quietly made my way towards the back of the store, lest this poor fellow somehow get in trouble for aiding and abetting the fugitive at the door.

The rest of the experience was rather uneventful. I stocked up on potato chips and toilet paper galore, and exited the store without incident.

I realize, for the record, that rules wouldn't be rules if they were constantly getting broken, but perhaps the management of SuckCo ought to consider the ramifications of imposing such parameters on its members. That, and maybe spring for a bigger sign listing the varying store hours, so that those of us pulling off the highway can actually get a decent look before tackling the chore of navigating the store parking lot.

For the most part, I'm over it, and next time I'll plan my SuckCo visit accordingly. But if I ever see either of those two doorway bitches again, I'm going to have to smack the crap out of them, lady-mullets and all.