A funny thing happened yesterday. I am one of those people who would buy just anything from a supermarket: groceries, beauty products, sanitary products, shoes, clothes… I mean, they put them on their shelves so you can buy them, right?
As it is, I am not exactly shy about buying certain things in a supermarket. Haven’t you always wondered why when you buy sanitary towels or tampons they have to be wrapped so tightly with three pages of old newspaper as if they were a banned commodity or harmful to all who view it? Seriously, the wrapping takes place so frantically and rapidly until you wonder what crime you committed by buying the “forbidden” commodities.
Anyway, yesterday I passed by the local supermarket to buy some things and, as usual, I started looking around at other things that I hadn’t intended to buy. So I came across some pretty underwear and it was so cheap! Who am I to ignore a bargain? So I took the brightly coloured unmentionables and promptly walked to the counter with my other things, waited in line and soon it was my turn to be served.
Now, I had noticed that there were only male cashiers in the supermarket but that didn’t really faze me (I have bought underwear here before J ) When it got to me, I put my things on the counter and to my amusement, the guy broke into an invisible sweat just by seeing them. I could tell by the way he held the garments so gingerly that he was wishing the ground could open up and swallow him (I’m getting ideas for weapons of mass destruction/distraction. Just show up with a handful of colourful underwear and you will render all such men helpless and weak).
Unfortunately, when he swiped the barcode reader thingie, what came up on the screen was “Item Not Found” or something of the sort. Now the guy really started to panic. The guy had to manually search for the item in the database and watching him try to write panties with a shaky hand took all my self-control to try and muffle some hysterical laughter.
He finally found the accursed panties and must have breathed a massive sigh of relief, but he wasn’t out of the woods yet. All my purchases done, I gave him my cash. This day was definitely not this dude’s lucky day coz now the machine malfunctioned and the entry refused to calculate. He couldn’t record the sale and he couldn’t give me my change.
The guy now looked at me with the most stressed and cornered look on his face and told me to go to the next counter. I was not amused coz I could now feel many eyes on me. His partner offered to count the items for him but he refused saying “Eh…..kuna vitu zingine hapo….wacha aende hapa pengine” (There are some things there…let her go to another counter) and proceeded to direct me to the only female cashier, who quickly counted my items, gave me my change and I was good to go.
You’d think underwear is some secret commodity that no one ever uses or sees. Sheesh! And why stock underwear if your cashiers are too embarrassed to sell it?
I buy supermarket underwear, do you?