Bah * Humbug

This post will be like a Madlib. Whereever I put an asterisk, you put the appropriate participle of f**k. I would just write it, but then I'd have to admit to taking the low road. This way, I can keep in sight of the high road.

This untethered rant comes to you courtesy of the Giant grocery store around the corner from my house. I went there for flour and dutch process cocoa, so I can complete the Great Baking Project of 2008. Flour was easy to find, and I looked carefully on the baking aisle for the cocoa, but there was none to be found. I checked the coffee, tea and cocoa aisle, just in case someone had put the baking cocoa over there, but no * luck. In the meantime, at least 6 store employees walked past me, but none of them could stop to answer my question, because they were too * busy talking to each other. Instead of wasting my time further, I went to customer service to ask for the cocoa. This is a pretty common baking item, mind you, and is chemically different from natural cocoa, so I can't just substitute one for the other. I stood in line waiting for the lottery junkies to conclude their business, and ask the clerk for the cocoa. "What?" she says, dully. *, I think to myself. I repeated it louder and slower (instantly transforming myself into some * version of a * tourist without a grasp of the local lingo), and she repeated it after me. "Oh, that will be either in aisle 6 or aisle 10." Well, I know it's not in 6, because I just spent 5 minutes examining every * box of flavored chemical cake mix and * esoteric flour variety and didn't find it. So I wander over to aisle 10 to look for the * cocoa and lose my tenuous grip on my * mind because aisle 10 is the * INTERNATIONAL FOOD AISLE. Apparently, Little Miss Clerk assumed that "Dutch process" means * foreign, because she sent me to international food to look for it. Is this where she sends people looking for French Roast Coffee, German Potato Salad, or Hawaian Punch? This is what happens when the * grocery store hires * sullen people who can't take the time to look for an item in an index so that they can render something * approaching customer service. *. While I'm being sent all over the durned store looking for this basic baking supply, I've picked up 10 things I didn't come in for, so I can have eggnog and taboule while typing this, thus earning what will no doubt be a * epic attack of dyspepsia. Also took a detour to the produce section to find out that there are no cranberries. What kind of store in America doesn't have cranberries 3 days before Christmas? *. *. Seriously.