The joy of insanity

Some non-fictional stories have a good premise but lack in interesting details, so embellishments are needed here and there. That won't be necessary here. This story, won't do the details justice.

I had my first encounter with a crazy customer at the register the other day. Granted, many of the Trader Joe's customers are a bit off their rockers. They buy A LOT of cat food. A lot of cat food equals a lot of cats. A lot of cats equals a lot of lonliness. A lot lonliness equals something we like to call insanity. Hence, many of our customers are insane.

However, this lady's insanity had little to do with lonliness and everything to do with a curious disorder called paranoid schizophrenia. Yes, I've taken abnormal psychology and I managed a B bitch, I'm pretty sure about this one. My first hint this lady may have been beaten by the crazy stick was when she started asking other customers for donations. She was in line and kept saying, "Donations? Donations? Donations? Donations? Donations? Donations? Donations?..."

She arrvies at my register, after receiving no donations, and I proceed to check her out. I say, "Hi how's it going?" and I get no response. Instead, she just stares at me with these eyes that penetrate my soul. As I look into them, I shit you not, I could see a bunch of smurfs in the background stuffing things into boxes labeled "Craziness". There was also a husky smurf standing with a whip, pointing to a sign that read: "Tuesday - 602,568 units of crazy produced. Good job guys keep it coming." So that's how it's made.

The first words out of her mouth were, "Do you have a small box of grapes?". I send someone to go get her some grapes, he comes back with our smallest container, but she says there's too many. She takes a plastic bag, opens the container and places about 15 grapes into the plastic bag, then hands me back the container and says, "I don't want those". I tell her I can't ring her up her plastic bag so I'd have to charge her for the full box. She doesn't respond. So I charge her for the box.

At about this point I could see the smurfs were really putting on a sweat. They sweat gatorade, by the way. I tell her the total is $18.20. She hands me two dollars and proceeds to stare at the counter. I say, "ma'am, your total is $18.20. You handed me two dollars... Ma'am? Ma'am? Excuse me, Ma'am?...". The counter had taken her hostage.

By this point, the customers in line are getting impatient and start telling her she needs to pay me. She snaps out of her staring contest with the counter and pulls out a... Bible. I am not making this shit up. By now, the last thing I need is a fucking lesson in salvation. But as she opens it up, stuck in between the pages was money. She hands me a ten and a five, which brings our total to $17.00. $1.20 short.

She is now reading her Bible. I'm about to choke the bitch, because resting underneath that ten and five dollar bill was a twenty. I say, "Hey, there you go. Here I'll give you this seventeen dollars back and you give me that twenty." What came next proved to me, and the customers next to her, that we were dealing with craziness on an unforseen level. She looks and me and says, "No," and here it comes, "That twenty is for Jesus."

Shall I go on? I think not. What can top hording twenty dollar bills for Jesus? Nothing, that's what. But if you're curious as to what happened next, the lady next to her was kind enough to pay the $1.20 remainder. So the bitch was done, but not quite. She stood at the end of my register for about another 5 minutes, reminding everybody that walked in or out of the store that, "Jesus loves you".

You wonderful little smurfs! Oh man, keep it coming guys. Good work, keep hitting that quota.