So at the grocery store I'm juggling an armload of freezer items because I figured I'd be in and out. Well all the 20 item or less aisle had silly long lines so I picked what I thought was the shortest one behind two chatty Cathy's about my age or so who kept giving me dirty looks like "look at that idiot without a carriage." So I switched to the next aisle because I was so over them where a nice older gentlemen with an oxygen tank tells me immediately to go in front of him because "no lady should have to stand there like that." Then has the nicest conversation with me about how he used to be a marine and loves to cook and we talked about what we were making with out 20 items or less. The woman in front of us had ditched some cheese in the candy so the man addresses the cashier by her name and hands her the cheese so she can get it back to the dairy section before it spoils and the rude little cashier, who I wanted to then slap the crap out of by the way, says in the sarcastic way possible, eye rolls included, thanks you just saved the store like $5. Oh cashier Brittany, it's the principle of it and clearly you know nothing of the anatomy of a raise. So the cashier rings in all my stuff, with items ringing in incorrectly and her explaining to me that she's not going to fix it because the items are the same price and that "if your basil bag is ripped that's my fault." On my way out I made a point to thank the man for the 3rd time or so and reminded him to have a nice day. I wish I had remembered to thank him for his service to our country but I was so disgusted at my generation it slipped my mind.
It's just a blatant reminder of how times are changing and not necessarily for the better. People are too busy in their own worlds to stop and help out a fellow human being. Or even just to be polite and considerate. It really concerns me the direction our species is taking. We're so wrapped up and focused on technology and efficiency were are forgetting key life skills as this shopping trip exploration demonstrated to me today. I would have never asked or expected this man to be so generous to me but it meant a lot that he was.
