Don't mock my accent, Yankee-Woman

It is only 90 degrees outside right now with a heat index of 103. Yesterday at this time the heat index was 113, hence the "only". I'm 8 1/2 months pregnant and surprisingly still being a pleasant person. Granted that's due mostly to the fact that I keep my blinds closed and the air conditioner running and that my car and all the stores I visit are air conditioned and I only go outside when I'm walking to the mailbox. But still. It's ridiculously hot and humid, I'm very pregnant, and I've yet to bite any one's head off.

Now, is that too much to ask of the very not pregnant checkout clerk at my very least favorite grocery store?

I ran over to Aldi's today seeing as how we are due for our weekly 2 gallons of milk (one for Eric and one for Gabriela). It's no secret at our house that I don't like Aldi's. Nothing about it is ever a pleasant shopping experience. It's not that I cannot appreciate a discount store, but I'm picky about what food I buy and the ingredients I use to cook. I'd say 80% of the items they sell has high fructose corn syrup as one of the top 3 ingredients, so Aldi's just really has nothing that excites me. But their milk is cheap (and does not contain high fructose corn syrup). And Eric gets all panicky if he sees that I've bought milk from somewhere else. $1.79 per gallon is hard to compete with, I give him that. And so each week I make a stop by the local Aldi's to pick up milk (and sometimes cheese) and let my husband sort of think he is married to a super frugal woman.

But never again. If my husband wants cheap milk, that is going to be his chore from now on. I'd rather pay $3.00/gallon.

I ran in for two gallons of milk. So instead of digging around my diaper bag for a quarter so that I could get a buggy (yes, in order to get you to return your buggy you have to put down a quarter as collateral), I just threw Gabs on my hip, grabbed a reusable cloth grocery bag from the car, shoved a $10 bill in my pocket, and went in. I tossed a gallon of whole milk and a gallon of 2% in my bag and went to the checkout counter. Of course, as always, there was only one lane open. There were about five people with full buggies ahead of me, but I waited patiently until my turn. I put my bag with its two jugs of milk on the conveyor belt, tossed Gabs across my ever-growing belly to my other hip, and dug my money out of my pocket. It was finally my turn, so I approached the checkout lady, smiled, and said "Good afternoon!" She looked at my bag and back at me and said, "You have to unload that so I can scan your groceries." In my most pleasant tone and with a smile I responded, "Oh, it's just two gallons of milk", thinking that it would be plenty easy for her to pull out a gallon, scan it, and place it back in my bag. "Oh, well then," said the checkout clerk, "you need to unload your two gallons of milk so that I can scan them." And she even used a fake southern accent. She mocked me!

I unloaded my two gallons and then put them back in the bag myself - which was all a little awkward with only one free hand. And given that I was fighting a serious urge to use that one free hand to smack the woman behind the counter.

Customer service is worth a little something to me. I prefer to leave a store in as good of a mood as I enter. And so in order to protect my mood and, maybe more importantly, the physical safety of the Aldi's employees, I will no longer be shopping there.