Ugh, minor annoyances

 there are a lot of good things about modern life, but there are things I wish were not:

- Got a spam call on my cell phone today; that's been accelerating as I use that number for more things now. This one was asking for money for State Troopers, which, if not an outright scam, is scam-adjacent in that the company that calls would take most of the money in overhead. I need to learn just not to answer calls when I don't recognize the number. (This was one that COULD have been a student, though in retrospect, I don't give my number out to students)

- Someone who is not a lock on Twitter replied to a tweet and now I (and she, I presume) are getting a flood of randos responding we should try someone or something called Henry Q. I don't know what that is. I don't want to know. I automatically block the account. I'd report it, but the current head of twitter seems to be capricious enough that if the Henry Q boosters were buddies of his, reporting them might lead to MY account being suspended, because one thing I've learned recently is that justice in this world is less common that I was raised to believe.

- But most of all? I went to wal-mart this afternoon. Maybe I should not have. I had fundamentally what I needed for dinner (okonomiyaki) but it would have used up all my eggs and I was also worried about how much milk I had left (not that you put milk in that) and also I kind of wanted lemonade to drink and some kind of nice bread to eat with the okonomiyaki (and wal-mart's break is marginally nicer than Pruett's). So I went. I figured it might be problematic but sometimes when you go late in the afternoon it's not that busy, and it's not bad at all. Not so today. 

For one thing: several large families slowly walking up and down the aisles. And I try not to judge, I know it sucks to be stuck at home all day or at work all day and sometimes it's nice to have a place with different stuff to look at. But a group of seven people (three adults, four children) or so can really clog up a grocery store aisle, especially if they're all fanned out. And I tend to feel that small children, when they're tired and cranky - well, leave them at home with one of the adults. (When I was 12 or so, my mom would leave me in charge of my brother when she ran to the grocery, if our dad wasn't home yet)

The worst thing though? A group of five or six young-teen (I am guessing 13 or 14 year old) boys had commandeered a bunch of the electric mall-carts. I don't THINK any of them were disabled (again, I try not to judge, but based on their behavior, they weren't just shopping). They were trolling around the store in a pack and periodically yelling stuff at the women shopping. I think they yelled something at me but I just pretended not to hear it (years and years of "Just ignore them and they'll stop teasing you" in school - even if it didn't work then - was good training). And I thought: Guys, I'm old enough to be your mother. And if I had a son your age, and I found out he was doing this? He'd be Super Grounded. Which is worse than Regular Grounded, and he'd be Super  Grounded because (a) he's using a resource for people who need it and he does not, (b) he's disrespecting women and (c) he's making other people's lives worse and harder. And granted, yes, if I had a 14 year old son, given the kind of person I am and the fact that he'd know I'd Super Ground him for something like that, he probably would not be doing it. But still. It was unpleasant and made me shop with one eye looking over my shoulder.

 (Well, I kind of do that ANYWAY - a few weeks back there was a guy open-carrying - yes that's legal here - and the gun fell out of his pocket in the store and discharged and while no one was hurt and he did not intend for it to go off, still, there's enough bad impulses in our society right now that I"m always ready to bolt for  the nearest exit, or pancake on the floor if there's no exit nearby, at a moment's notice. And I'm SURE that's not good for us to have to behave like prey animals all the time)

And of course there aren't enough employees, and no one really paid well enough to deal with it, to tell the kids to knock it off. So I guess they did it until they got bored.

And then, finally - I got in one of the few staffed checkstands' lines. The last time I had a credit card number stolen, I'm pretty sure it was skimmed from one of the self-check terminals there, so I hate using a credit card with those (Also, I still feel like we should get a discount if we use them, seeing as we're saving wal-mart the cost of staffing with enough checkers). 

Unfortunately, the people in the line ahead of me FIRST got into an argument with the cashier, then said "oh wait we don't have enough money" and well, yes, I sympathize, they immediately started arguing about what needed to be put back (like: one of the teen girls was refusing to give up the candy she was buying). There was another checkstand open but two people with extremely full carts and a checker I know to be slow.

So I sighed, decided maybe the gamble of having my credit card number stolen was worth the convenience, and went to the self checks. As it turns out, my bill was less than $50, and I had enough cash on me (Will have to go to the bank tomorrow, though) so I paid cash and don't have to worry.

And of course: Had to show my receipt on the way out because "of course" everyone who uses the self-checkouts are stealing from wal-mart. Even though the "greeters" there did sweet fanny adams about the rude-boys carting around the store. 

Like I said: much, much less justice in the world than I was taught as a kid.