Bananas Thursday: Hubby, the Grocery Man

It's "Banana's Thursday" because I didn't like any of the Mama Kat  prompt suggestions, so instead, I'm going to share a recent funny discovery about my Hubby--it cracked me up, listening to him on our last shopping trip, talking to a teenage bagger and, when he got into the car, I said, "I can't believe it! You've turned into Anal Grocery Man!"  And I just cackled with glee--because, normally the Hubby is laid back and easy going and, of the two of us, if anyone could be called, "anal," it's not him. It's me--who can spin up into a hurricane of dogmatic minute preciseness about a thing.

We do our shopping at the Force Base Commissary, where the people who bag your groceries work strictly for tips. They are all either retired military, active duty military or dependents of military---so there's a broad range of ages doing the bagging. Typically, more of the adults bag in the mornings and more teenagers work the afternoons and, equally typically, the adults are more practiced at bagging things correctly, since bagging is their regular part-time job, while kids might do it just for summer.

Training in general bagging guidelines is given, of course, but that doesn't necessarily mean the kids really get that bread needs to be arranged so it doesn't get crushed and the eggs should NOT be put on the bottom under other heavy stuff!

Both things we've experienced and having had those experiences, my Hubby has since become quite adept at instructing the young baggers on how we want bread & eggs handled.

So I'm used to hearing him explain at the check-out counter that we everything goes in plastic bags except the bread and eggs, which go into a brown paper bag. For a adult baggers, that's usually enough, but this last shopping trip we had a teenager, who was new on the job.
So he gets more detailed instructions from the Hubby:
"Take take a paper bag, place a folded paper bag on the bottom of that bag, put the eggs on top of that, then put the bread on top of the eggs." 
Since the bread in question  was 3 bags of wiener buns, Hubby explained that they should be arranged upright on end, side-by-side, not stacked on top of each other."

The teen repeated what he thought he heard: "Put the eggs on the bottom, the folded bag on top of the eggs and the bread on top of the eggs."

"No," Hubby said, and explained it again. The teen got it that time and  bagged the eggs and buns as instructed.

However, this is not the conversation that made me inform Hubby he'd turned into "Anal Grocery Man." I hear him explain this about the eggs and the bread weekly. It's routine.

It was the incident at the car, after the bagger had loaded the groceries into the rear of our SUV that drew my attention.

I was in the front seat, but the tailgate was up, so I could hear everything.

We had purchased a hot & fresh rotisserie chicken and my Hubby couldn't locate. It was in a plain tan plastic bag camouflaged among other tan plastic bags--so, when he finally located it, he found the bagger had carelessly loaded it in such a way it was turned over sideways, which could cause grease to leak out, PLUS he'd put the hot chicken right next to the cold milk! 

My Hubby then launched into his "teacher voice" and proceeded to instruct the bagger on the proper loading of a rotisserie chicken in the back of a vehicle, so it wouldn't spill and wouldn't be put next to something cold.

That's what got me.

The bagger left, Hubby closed the rear gate. He got in the car and I looked right at him, both astonished and snickering and said, "You've so totally turned into Anal Grocery Man! I've completely rubbed off on you!"

And we had a hearty laugh. 

Then at our Sunday Bible study I told our group of Air Force kids this and they thought it was hilarious!
(They love hearing about our little foibles!)

We laughed more about it the other night on our way to Ruby Tuesday's and commented together it's a good thing we're in a place in our marriage where we can laugh with each other about ourselves!

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That's it for today. See you Monday!