Ugh, shopping in the rain is awful.
At the bulk club store, I picked up a few much needed supplies for our holiday bash: A veggie tray with dip, a four-pack of Rutger Hauer movies, a bulk box of Chex mix, and a case of Yuengling lager. I didn’t notice that the rain had started until I had left the store without an umbrella.
Stepping upon the sidewalk, I noticed the gang of surly parking lot attendants. Their job - gather the carts from the irate holiday customers and stack them neatly where incoming shopper could find them. These particular attendants take their job way too seriously during the holiday shopping season. If they find your cart empty for any reason, they’ll take it from you and stow it away inside the store for incoming shoppers. I was only lucky enough to find one of the miniature carts, on which I had been precariously piling my purchases as I was shopping.
Also, the parking situation was desparate. I had to park in the hinterlands just to park at all, and there was a good chance that if I tried to move any closer that I would be lost a spot altogether. Plus, the same draconian attendants looked very unkindly at idling in the “no parking” zone.
Still, I had the misfortune of needing to get all of my purchases to my car, pushing my cart through the rain. I wasn’t convinced that I’d be able to safely balance all four items on my tiny cart while dashing through the rainy lot to my car.
The guy at the door who checks receipts to make sure nobody’s stealing anything said he’d watch some of my packages for me if I wanted to take several trips, and I thanked him as I decided to take advantage of his kindness.
I figured that it the time it would take me to get through the lot corresponded to the bulkiest item I was carrying. The beer would take 3.5 minutes, 30 seconds for the movies, a minute for the veggie tray, and 2 minutes for the gigantic box of Chex Mix. Since I my cart would be taken unless I kept an item in my cart the whole time, I figured my total time shuffling stuff around in the rain would be 8 minutes, since I’d have to shuttle the movies back to the store each time to pick up the next item.
But using this same bizarre method of item shuffling I figured out a faster way. Any idea what it was?
