Just one lemon

I've had a hard time buying a lemon at the super-gigantic-mega-hypermarket. They only sell them in threes, and when I go to buy a lemon I only want one. I'm not the type you see in home decor magazines, with a huge plate of lemons sitting on the table, like someone who lives in a house that looks so pristine it's uninhabited is about to make five gallons of lemonade. I usually buy one lemon and a couple of cans of garbanzo beans when I want to make hummus, and I don't really need extra lemons rotting in the bottom of the fruit drawer in my fridge. Anyway, the cashier always tells me I need to buy three, we call the manager, and after some debate I walk out with my orphan lemon. It's gotten to the point where, to save time, I tell the cashier to call the manager before we begin our routine.

On my penultimate (love that word) plus one encounter, the produce manager explained that the terminals were programmed to only accept lemons in threes, but after arranging a special dispensation told me he would give feedback to the top brass. They didn't get the message, or chose not to implement it, because the next time I went there we replayed the whole sorry scene. However, the manager made a special label with a bar code for single lemons and told me that from then on each cashier would have one in her little book of price labels that she scans.

Finally, I got that craving for hummus again, grabbed my two cans of garbanzos and a lemon, and girded myself for battle. Predictably, the cashier started in on her you-have-to-buy-three-lemons spiel. I told her to check her little book, and bingo! I got my lemon without the intervention of top management. Who says you can't fight city hall? I've got my own special label!

But another battle looms. Bing cherries are in season. They sure are tempting, but I quickly lose my appetite. The cherries are loose, and a swarm of kiasu shoppers are fingering and examining each one, making sure that they choose only the BEST from this mass of nearly identical little orbs. They spend an inordinate amount of time doing this. These cherry bins could be the main launching pad for an H1N1 outbreak, but they don't care. So long as they get the best cherries, they'll take the risk.