From incompetence to perfection

So tonight I made another excursion to the grocery store. You all know I have high grocery store expectations; I've written about it before. After working at one for many of my formative working years, there are things about this experience, when they go wrong, that just irk me deeper than other things in life. There are a number of grocery stores around us; unfortunately, due to budget, I am limited in my options. I mostly attend our local Acme because it is close by, reasonably priced and I know my way around the store and the personnel by now.

Tonight, I had the pleasure of being served by a bevy of enthusiastic and helpful personnel. Insert sarcasm here. My experience started, as it is wont to do, with the deli counter. I detest the deli counter, so I like to take care of it up front. Even though there are three girls behind the counter, only one of them was working, as one was cleaning a slicer (a legitimate excuse) and the other was on her cell phone behind the prepared foods, hiding.

So, fine; I wait my turn while the man in front of me buys a pound of beef bologna (hello heart attack) and about 18 bags of kaiser rolls. The deli girl who is working was nice to him. She then turns to me and already has attitude. I ask her for a 1/3 of a pound of Danish Ham, as it is clearly labeled in the case. She makes a face like my request carries a malodorous scent, and has to get help finding the appropriate ham. It's on sale for cripes sakes - don't tell me no one else requested it today.

She then proceeds to slice 3/4 of a pound, not 1/3 as requested. I could see that the pile was growing larger than I customarily purchase, but did not want to interrupt her in case my perception was off. She prints out the snazzy label and sure enough, it's .75 of a pound. That's fine, because it's on sale, but a bit wasteful because we won't eat that before it goes bad.

"Anything else?" she asks, looking past me.

"Yeah, I asked for 1/3 of a pound of the ham, but that's no big deal. Can I have 1/3 of a pound of the turkey breast? Not 3/4 of a pound, 1/3," I say. Now that probably comes off looking bad in print, but I had a legitimate concern that this girl just did not understand her decimals nor the conventions of general English associated with them.

"I'll take the ham back," she says, dripping with 'tude.

"No, it's no big deal. But I only need 1/3 lb of the turkey."

"Okay," she says, looking at me like I am a crazy, high-strung deli meat nazi.

Is it wrong to want what you ask for?

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I then had a very pleasant experience with one of my regular personnel in seafood (that's right, we eat SOME fish in this household), so things were looking up, even though I had run into the creepy bagger guy who always has to talk to me.

At the check out, I am greeted by a new cashier who looks startlingly like Chunk of Goonies fame. I wanted to grill him about the time he pushed his sister down the stairs in third grade. Anyway, this kid starts off on the wrong foot by calling me "m'am", which we've been over before.

"M'am, didn't you see the sign at the end of the aisle?"

Now, the creepy bagger guy often gives me this line, so I've heard it before.

"Don't tell me you're rocking that line now," I said (I really did say that!)

Chunk looked around for creepy bagger guy, who was not in sight. He then proceeded to tell me that this was the smile aisle, and I had to smile. Yeah, yeah...ring up my asparagus, will ya? There's nothing I hate more than being told I should smile, cheer up, etc. Before I walked out, he also demonstrated an inability to juggle plastic tubes and exchanged snitty comments with another cashier, reinforcing my belief that he was about 12 years old.

This entire experience is oddly juxtaposed in my life with a training seminar today on managing multiple projects and deadlines. In it, we learned that delegation is a key tool in getting things done - delegation also happens to be something I suck at. The root of the problem, for me, is that I want not only control, but everything to be perfect, and I believe that only I can deliver that perfection. I was judging all these poor souls at Acme with the same yardstick - I would never have misjudged measurements, given attitude, creeped people out or spouted inane commentary.

In the seminar, we were taught to reject perfectionism. It is impossible to be perfect. We are to think progress, not perfection. Because even if something is 80% right, it's still moving forward toward a goal. Who cares if every step of the way is not perfect, as long as the outcome is what you want?

I got my Danish Ham, didn't I?




PS - this whole time I've been trying to think of what the title of this post reminds me of - it finally hit me. The blockbuster movie, From Justin to Kelly