I thought I was being clever. I thought that if I went to the grocery store immediately after getting off work at 3:30pm on a Tuesday, it wouldn’t be too crowded. I thought.

What I did not think was that everyone else in the world is either unemployed or on vacation this week, and of course they spend their free time at the grocery store. Working an early shift and not waiting until the last minute didn’t really matter – or maybe they did, but I’m not going to the store at 6pm tomorrow to find out – because it still took forever to shop for whatever I’m using to make Thanksgiving vegetables at my dad’s house, and I still didn’t walk out of there with any alcohol.

While I wouldn’t say the people at the grocery store are normally very smart, if I’m being generous, I’d say that they normally aren’t total mesomorph idiots. But this is a holiday week and everyone’s been shook free from the idiot tree, so to speak, so there was a plethora of elementary, mouth-breathing, glue-sniffing droolers out today.

Hey, 75-year-old woman shopping with grown kids, none of whom can seem to locate the bag aisle even though you’ve passed it twice – how many Thanksgivings have you had by now, a hundred? Shouldn’t you know how to shop for it at this point? If I ever get to the point where I’m old enough to forget how to navigate a grocery store or if I have adult children who are too stupid to know how to navigate a grocery store, please somebody put me in a home where a capable person does all of my grocery shopping for me.

Hey, lady with four kids buying an entirely pre-packaged Thanksgiving meal – come on, really? You really need potatoes in a box, stuffing in a bag, gravy in a jar, and cranberry jelly in a can? While I’m aware of the unfair disparity in price between cheap processed foods and whole, real ingredients, don’t you know what all that packaged bullshit goes way up during the holidays? Do you know how cheap regular potatoes are? And that if you just saved the drippings from your turkey and a few stale pieces of bread, you could make the gravy and stuffing practically for free? Lady, I don’t say this often, but you need to go to Junior Achievement and learn some economics.

Hey, insufferable man having an argument over the phone with what I assume to be a spouse in the wine aisle – you look ridiculous. I know you’re into saving the earth with your cloth grocery bags, but that whole “good person” thing goes right out the window when you tell your conversation partner that anything you get “had better fucking well be” good enough because “it’s not like you’ll stay sober, anyway.”

Hey, hipster vegan throwing a tantrum because the store was out of turnips – you need to sit down and sip on some juice before you wear yourself out. You don’t get enough protein to make yourself this upset. Take a nap, little buddy. I’m sure there’s plenty of PBR waiting for you at home, and after one or four or six, you might actually realize that people besides you do eat vegetables and they’re not publicly pretentious assholes about it. Also, turnips keep forever if you cellar them, so you should’ve gone shopping like a month ago.

Hey, lady who stops to have a conversation in the middle of a produce aisle while one kid escapes from the cart and the other whines loudly about not getting to have any dried, pitted dates – your kids are fucking weird.

Hey, checkout bagger – I seriously think you might be retarded. I’m not trying to offend any actual retarded people who read this by throwing the word around without regard to its meaning. But seriously. I think you might be retarded. Next time just tell me if you’re having a bad day and I’ll be happy to do the bagging myself.

Hey, people who don’t put their carts away especially when it’s raining out – there’s a special cart corral in Hell waiting for you.

Hey, douchebag driving the giant SUV who nearly ran me over – you should probably be less of a fucking shithead. I get that you’re in a hurry to get home. We all are. But when you can’t bear to wait for me to walk my cart across a single lane of parking lot and stomp on the gas to teach me a lesson, you’re courting a fucking lawsuit because I do not play when it comes to getting hit by cars. Also, you should get your transmission checked out. It sounds like shit when you’re trying to kill people, and I’d hate for it to blow up on the interstate or something. Lastly, nice JESUS bumper sticker. You seem like a true Christian.

Hey, old guy wearing head-to-toe Cardinals gear who smiled me and said “I don’t even know what the hell I’m doin’ in this goddamn store” — you’re pretty awesome. Keep being you.