How come I can't get through the grocery checkout lane without the clerk or the bagger commenting about how many cans of cat food I buy, which inevitably leads to questions about how many cats I own, how much I feed them, and why I need so many cans? Has nobody in this state heard of stocking up? For their information, I have one cat who eats two 3-oz cans of food a day, which is more than a typical cat but not unheard-of. Is there something wrong with my buying her three weeks' worth of food at once? All I do is go to the Fancy Feast shelf and buy one can of each flavor, right down the line, and apparently I belong in Ripley's Believe It or Not! for this extreme shopping practice.


Six Replies to A Pet Peeve That's Actually About My Pet

Lori Lancaster | August 8, 2006
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Jackie Mason | August 8, 2006
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Anna Gregoline | August 8, 2006
I personally think it's rude to comment on any customer's purchases.

Scott Hardie | August 9, 2006
I guess I don't mind being talked to about my purchases – just between you and me and the Internet, I have this little thing for supermarket checkout clerks – but to be made to feel weird about a particular purchase that I can't skip, and nearly every time I buy it, just turns me off. The next closest grocery is another 15 minutes away, but I'm tempted to switch.

Aaron Shurtleff | August 9, 2006
HOLY CRAP ON A POGO STICK!!! You buy 42 cans of cat food at a time! What's wrong with you??? jk Wait...42...why does that number seem significant... ;)

Seriously, though, I think it's universal. I buy a lot of fish (I have a modestly small aquarium, and a fish from hell that won't stop eating all of my other fish...and I can't bear to part with him), and the checkout lady always asks me why I don't buy the cheap feeder fish (they are ugly ugly fish), or advises me to check out the pH (or conductivity, or one of several hundred water quaility parameters that I know isn't the problem). Checkout people are just funny like that!

Also, at Wal-Mart, I used to have to buy lots of jalapeno peppers (like 15-20 pounds at a time) to maintain a colony of wasps (gotta love the entomology!), and I'd always get questions! I used to make stuff up sometimes! I would tell them that I was trying to break the Guiness record for the biggest fajita, or that I was getting revenge on my echeating lover by mixing them into his protein shake (hey, if I'm lying anyway, I might as well be gay!). It entertained me, and the cashier got to have a story to tell everyone, so no harm no foul, right? ;)

Amy Austin | August 13, 2006
Well, I don't know about "no foul"... (da-dum-dum!) ;-D


Logical Operator

The creator of Funeratic, Scott Hardie, blogs about running this site, losing weight, and other passions including his wife Kelly, his friends, movies, gaming, and Florida. Read more »

Ketchup Packets

I was verbally mugged by a former coworker today, a guy I used to think of as a friend some time ago. I had the displeasure of laying him off last year, and after months of struggling to get by with nothing but condiments in his fridge, he started a blog to vent his frustration at me and a few other coworkers he disliked. The comments are very mean-spirited, from professional criticisms about my managerial competence and decision-making, to personal and apparently very nasty jokes about my weight and appearance. Go »

24 Hours in Orlando

Recent conversation with Brenda: me: "It's nice to meet you!" Brenda: "It's nice to meet you too!" As Steve mentioned, Kelly and I drove up to Orlando on Friday night to have dinner with the vacationing West family. Go »

OK Glass

Last weekend, Kelly and I drove up to St. Petersburg with friends to see Ira Glass present a one-man stage show explaining how he makes This American Life on the radio. I had no prior familiarity with his work, having not heard the radio show unlike the fans that I went with, but I think it's long past time that I started listening to the celebrated series online. Go »

House Hunted

I'm not superstitious, or I wouldn't say this until the closing next month: Kelly and I are buying a house. It's a great house, too, with a guest bedroom and a pool, and the neighbor training horses in the back yard every day, and plenty of room for just about whatever we'd want to do with it, at a lower price than similar houses around here. It's not a hundred percent perfect but damn if it ain't close. Go »

All King and No Kubrick Make Jack a Dull Boy

I recently got to talking with friends who liked The Shining, both Stephen King's novel and Stanley Kubrick's film adaptation of it, but who were unaware that King has always loathed the movie, despite its reputation as one of the best horror films ever made. It's hard to imagine that a writer doesn't know his own work better than someone interpreting it, but I think this is one of those rare cases where the writer is just too close to the story to get it. Here are three reasons why I think Kubrick's film better understands the material, and is better overall, than King's novel: 1) In King's version, Jack Torrance is a fundamentally decent man who wouldn't hurt a fly, but who is down on his luck and desperate. Go »

Nooooooooooodge

You know what would be nice? If Google, one of the most web-savvy companies in existence, could manage to remember my goddamn user settings for more than 48 hours. I'm getting really sick of discovering them reset to defaults and having to change them all over again. Go »