Shopping and paying – the two are inevitably linked.

A slight run in with a lady shopper in Tesco today made me want to write this blog now, even though I have wanted to share this view for ages – I held back in case I was accused of being ist.

I’ll qualify my blog slightly by opening stating that men are pretty crap at a lot of things, too many to list, but women are crap at shopping. Not shopping per se, but paying for their shopping after they’d had it beeped by the surly gits on the checkouts.

Here is what happened. The woman, I call her that for that is what she was, had a whole line of stuff and did the usual woman panic thing when I started to load my gear near to her without the blue Tesco divider. She was having conniptions and I refuse to use these things.

She was so agitated that she actually started to hop about so I said to her, don’t worry love, I promise not to let her (the checkout lady) sell you any of my stuff, you see I came here to get it for me and not for you.

She looked a little terrified and turned her back on me.

All of her stuff was finally scanned (and none of mine) at which surly git woman stated how much she – Mrs Customer, had to pay.

Mrs Customer then did the slapped in the face routine and looked momentarily stunned until it dawned on her that she actually had to pay for her stuff.

Looking slightly relieved she then spent several minutes looking into her bloody handbag for her purse, several more minutes looking in her huge purse for the card and proffered both her ClubCard and her payment card with the self satisfied look of someone who has just discovered next weeks winning lottery numbers.

I snapped.

Peter to Mrs Customer: You have shopped here before?

Mrs C: Yes, why?

Peter: You do know that you always have to pay for your stuff here, it’s never free?

Mrs C: Sorry?

Peter: Why the whole palaver with the bag, the purse and the card? Why can’t women just pay like blokes do?

She then looked stunned, paid and went through the whole fucking finding the card routine in reverse. Making sure that she placed her cards in exactly the same spot in her purse (so she ought to bloody well know where they are next time!) and then burying her purse inside her handbag – and all of this while not moving away from the checkout so that I, and everyone else had to wait for her.

And this is typical, wherever I go, I see women behave like they’ll been asked to munch on the Pope’s goolies when they are asked to pay for something!

Tsk tsk women, man up please.