The Weasel's Shopping Trip

Mr. and Mrs. Weasel drive their shiny SUV to the supermarket. In the back are young Johnny Weasel and baby Jane Weasel. Today they are going to Safeway. They are in a bit of a hurry - as always - and along the way they cutoff a few other cars and nearly run over a cyclist. But they do not even notice this. Mr. Weasel is talking on his cellphone the entire way - a very important conversation - and is understandably unable to direct his full attention to the road.

Now they are approaching the store. There are many entrances to Safeway - at least half a dozen. Mr. Weasel skips the first one - it is somewhat inconvenient. The second one is very convenient, and spits you right into the parking lot. The only problem is that it is not meant to be entered from the direction Mr. Weasel is driving, and is in fact obviously angled to accommodate only traffic from the other direction. But Mr. Weasel does not care - he will save at least 30 seconds by going in this way, and this is justified because Mr. Weasel is a Very Busy and Very Important Man. He slows down to make the awkward illegal turn, blocking traffic behind him while he waits for oncoming traffic to go by (note that his turn signal is not on - in fact Mr. Weasel uses that instrument so infrequently he forgets exactly how to engage it). Then Mr. Weasel crosses 2 freshly painted yellow double lines, and enters the Safeway parking lot. In the back, Johnny Weasel absorbs all this at a subconscious level...

In the parking lot, Mr. Weasel takes some time to find the closest spot to the entrance, and finally wedges his large vehicle into a parking stall that is too small, inconveniencing the cars to either side, who will have difficulty opening their doors. But Mr. Weasel is Important, quite possibly more Imporant than most other people. Mr. Weasel is also very Large, and a shorter walk is preferable.

They spend little time shopping, as they only needed to pick up a few things, and soon queue up in the 10 items or less checkout aisle. Well, I guess they picked up more than a few things - looks like 17 in fact. But the Weasel parents pay not attention to this - they are very Important People after all, and the other checkout aisles were much too crowded. In fact, many people lined up here have more than 10 items. The checkout person does not worry about it either - in Safeway, 10 probably means at least 15. Can you say co-dependency ? As a bonus, Johnny is learning to count !

Well the shopping trip is almost over. They wheel their full cart over to the car. Wait - full cart - I thought they just picked up a few items ? Yes, well a caselot of 2 litre Pepsi bottles is really only 1 item... Anyways, Mr. Weasel has finished loading everything, and has worked up quite a sweat. He's much too tired to push the empty cart over to the cart collector cage, and deftly wheels it up onto the walkway, partially blocking the path of any unfortunate pedestrians who should happen along.

They exit the parking lot - amazingly enough they are about to execute a perfectly legal right turn onto the road. But hold on ! The Weasels are hungry after all the hard work, and there's a McDonalds across the street. Mr. Weasel quickly does a U-turn across the 2 double yellow lines and heads over to Rotten Ronnie's. Yay!