the poles

Every time I leave my house to go shopping for groceries, office supplies, the odd nick-knack, I have two choices. I can go North, or I can go South. Over the past year, since we first moved here, I've learned that depending on which direction I travel, I will have a very different experience. If I go North, I encounter a rougher neighbourhood with pawn shops, interesting characters wandering the streets, and stores that always seem to need re-stocking. If I go South, I encounter clean streets, posh doggies, an abundance of newer-looking SUVs, and tooty-fruity customer service.

Yesterday, I went North.

Plava on hip, I walked across the parking lot past some gloomy looking people and impatient drivers. Having previously failed to find some certain office supplies that I was in search for in "the South", I ventured Northward to an Office Depot in hopes of being a tad more successful. Plava requested to be put down because she wanted to "awk" (walk) and so together we stepped on the pads and watched the doors slide open in front of us. She was quite amused. We immediately encountered a nice older man who said a few kind words to little Plava as he headed past us and left the store. I then looked up and around, and found that the store looked quite deserted....

Where were the workers? That's odd. But the lights were on and I could see a few people roaming the aisles. We walked in and past the vacant tills and started looking for our goods. The aisles were strangely bare. I wondered whether the store was going out of business, but there was no real indication of that.

Plava seemed to have a mind of her own, and a direction that she wanted to walk in, so we worked our way rather slowly through the aisles searching for the stuff. It was of no use though, because we found nothing. I admit that after a few minutes in the store, I would have been surprised to find anything I wanted. It was bare and oddly quiet.

There WAS music on though, and Plava celebrated that fact by rounding a corner and starting to do a dance on the spot. It was being blasted from a large stereo, up high on a shelf, in the very back corner of the place. Hmmm, classy sound system for such a large store....

I grabbed a few smaller items that were on my list, ones that I actually found, and headed for the till. There was only one open that I could see, and there was only one customer ahead of me, talking to the clerk. I stood and waited, and found that they were working on some kind of purchase problem, or return, or something like that. Eventually, the clerk looked at me and said, "You might want to go over there," and she pointed to an oddly situated counter further back in the store, "It'll be faster."

I walked over and discovered a line of about 4 people. A tall, slender chap stood a little ways away from the queue, and I asked him if he was in line. "Yes, I am," he responded, and so I stepped in behind him. He stood, holding his items, sighing as loudly as he could muster. Apparently he was in a rush. There was a mother with a baby and a young girl ahead of him who seemed to really want to move things along as well. And first in line, at the till, was an older man, looking annoyed with the woman behind the counter. She was flipping madly through a catalogue, trying to find something or other, her hair all askew in her face, mumbling, "...I think it's....around here somewhere....ummmm....." A man came up in line behind me and Plava suddenly wanted to be picked up. I told her that we would go outside soon, hoping she'd be encouraged to just wait, but instead she started showing signs of throwing a tantrum.

So the place sounded a little like this:

SIIIIIGH!!!!
Aaaaarggh! (Plava flinging her arms around her body in frustration)
hmmm.....ummmm......
SIIIIIGGH!!!!
ummm....it's here somewhere.....hmmmm
OOoooooo I wanna dance with somebody!! I wanna feel the HEAT with somebody!!! (the stereo blasting in the background)
Upppieee! Mamaaaaa! Aaaarrgh!!! (Plava jumping on the spot)
SIIIIIIIGH!!!!!

At last, a man wearing a Office Depot badge reading "in training" and wearing big, dark sunglasses came up and said, "I can help the next person at this till over here."

He must have just gotten laser eye surgery and had to wear those shades, because let me tell you, they were HUGE. And at the end of a weird visit to no-man's-land-Office-Depot, it was a really strange thing to have him standing there wearing them, asking me if "that would be all today?".

I left the store, and walked back through the parking lot full of impatient drivers who hoped I'd RUN across the crossWALK rather than just walk like the word suggests. I got Plava and I into our car, and pulled out. As I was driving to the exit of the parking lot, I passed an older man who looked up into the sky and flipped it the bird.

Apparently he had something against the clouds that day.

Tomorrow, I think I'll go South.