Staying human in the WinCo express line
What do you do about the older white guy with 19 items in the express line on a cold winter night during a coup?
It is a late afternoon/early Sunday evening at WinCo, which is one of the worst times to be at WinCo. Everyone who is at WinCo should be home making dinner, but they aren’t home making dinner because either this is the only time they can do their shopping for the week or because they are missing the ingredients they need that have brought them here to WinCo at a day and time that turns the grocery store into some kind of devil’s playground. They’d need to be the kind of people living the kinds of lives where they don’t have to shop at this time or don’t realize, right when they need it, that they are missing something that would have made it possible to have a nice, comforting meal to assuage the Sunday scaries that are excessively, existentially scary on this particular first Sunday of February, 2025. But they aren’t that kind of person.
Or, at least, I am not that kind of person, not right now.
So here we all are, some with carts loaded and others with just a few items necessary to get through the night. (A carton of half-and-half, in my case, plus some toothpaste because I remembered after getting here that we are almost out, and some cans of tomatoes just in case because I didn’t check the tomato supply even though I am trying to make tomato soup.) The lines at every register are spilling-into-the-long-wide-aisle-in-front-of-the-registers long, because they are always long at WinCo. Because WinCo never has enough staff on hand to open all the registers, even when the line extends all the way to the beer cases at the other side of the store.
In the bank of 17 registers, 5 are closed. (Yes, I counted.) There are only 2 express lines open, each with lines longer than those for the loaded-cart folks, but they should go faster, right? As long as we all play by the posted rule of having no more than 15 items to purchase. That’s what I think when my husband and I get into one of the express lines.
Because we are standing in line and I’m trying to stay off my doomphone, I have time to look at the people around me. The man in front of us is an older white dude. Maybe our age? Thin, with a nicer looking coat than most of the other WinCo patrons. He has a lot of prepared foods in his cart.
“That guy’s bachelor shopping,” my husband whispers to me.
Because I’m trying to stay off my doomphone and because it is Sunday night and I especially hate WinCo on Sunday nights and because the lines are so god-awful long, I listen to the devil whispering in my other ear and I count that guy’s items as he loads them onto the conveyor belt. There are 19.
“He’s over the limit,” I mutter to my husband. Of course, I think.
I try to distract myself with magazine covers, but one featuring “what it’s like to grow up royal” just pisses me off, even though the faces on it all belong to children, and sure, yes, of course I’m glad that Princess Kate’s cancer is in remission, but all I can think about is how nice it must be for her to have the kind of healthcare she does, which I’m pretty sure none of the people shopping at WinCo have. I am not thinking how nice in a nice way. Everything about WinCo makes me acutely aware of social classes and which one I belong to.
Then I hear, “Hey man, you’ve got more than 15 items.”
It’s the man standing behind us, younger than the man in front of us, holding a large jug of Arizona iced tea, and nothing else. One item. He’s talking to Older White Dude, who ignores him. Older White Dude acts like he doesn’t hear anything.
“Hey, you’ve got more than 15 items.” Louder, harsher.
Older White Dude turns to face him. “So?”
“So people have noticed.”
(Shit. Am I the cause of this? Because I grumbled about how many items he had?)
“So what? You want me to put it all back in my cart? Is that what you want?” Older White Dude shows no signs of weakness. No shame, no embarrassment. He’s all fight, no flight.
“I’m just telling you, man.”
“Stop telling me what to do and maybe mind your own business.”
“I’m not telling you want to do. I’m just telling you that you’ve got more than 15 items.”
Arizona Tea Man’s seemingly peaceful words do not defuse Older White Dude’s anger. The two men go back and forth, and with each exchange Older White Dude doubles down on how he hasn’t done anything wrong and stop telling him what to do. Tea Man keeps saying, “I’m not telling you to do anything. I’m just letting you know,” but I hear his agitation growing, rising to meet that of Older White Dude.
Finally, Tea Man stops responding, but now Older White Dude can’t let it go.
“Maybe if she (he gestures to the cashier) doesn’t care, you shouldn’t either.”
Should I say something? I wonder. Take Tea Man’s side? Because I said something first (even if I didn’t say it to him)? Because Older White Dude is being a dick?
I mean, I’m mad at Older White Dude, too. It’s not so much because he has 19 items. To be angry over that is petty, and I know it. I knew it when I grumbled about it to my husband. It’s more that it seems like it is almost always older white dudes who push the limit on the express line. It is never harried young women with children, or older women with just 16 items. The women almost always go to the other lines. It is almost always dudes, usually white, often with more than 20 items. You know they know what they are doing and somehow think it’s OK that they are doing it, that somehow the rules don’t really apply to them. Of late there’s been a whole lot of Older White Dudes fucking things up for all of us who have spent our lives playing by the rules and still—still!—here we are at damn WinCo on a Sunday evening. So, it’s easy for me to be pissed at this particular Older White Dude, even though he’s never personally done anything to me (other than get ahead of me in this line with 19 items) and I can’t tell who he voted for so technically I can’t blame him for what’s really bothering me right now.
But also: It is the witching hour at WinCo on a Sunday night, and we are all tired. We are shopping in a place full of nearly-expired food, bad fluorescent lighting, and garish signage.
This is not Whole Foods. There are no pyramids of bright, fresh produce. No magazines beckoning with subtly beautiful cover art. No young, attractive cashiers with artful sleeve tattoos disappearing into their actual rolled-up plaid flannel sleeves. We are living and shopping in the other Portland, and everyone and everything in this place is tired, in all senses of the word.
I think of the invisible burdens I am carrying, the things that are more than partially responsible for my being here at this time, some that even people close to me don’t know about. Those things might garner some empathy if they were apparent to anyone else standing in one of these interminable lines, pushing a cart with a wobbly wheel, and I wonder what hidden pain Older White Dude might be carrying into this experience. Maybe it’s not his privilege or position in the world that made him break the rule, but is instead some grief or worry or fear or threat that he can’t put aside or down. I wonder what other thing might be keeping him from being able to just say, “Sorry, I didn’t realize.” Or, “Hey, would you like to go ahead of me?” Or even, “Why don’t you give me that jug of tea and I’ll put it in with my things?”
I’d be cool with any of those responses from him, but I don’t ask my questions or make suggestions or say anything that might help either man in this situation because I am frozen. I am frozen because I am standing between two men whose anger is escalating, and I know that is never a safe place to be. My go-to response to threat is freeze, and that’s what my amygdala has me doing. (This response may seem a little over-the-top, but someone was murdered in this store not too long ago, and the coup of my government escalated over the weekend, so threats feel abundant. )
And then the moment passes. Both men stop talking to each other. We all get through the line and exit the store. On my way out, we pass Older White Dude and I think about asking him why he couldn’t just say “sorry,” but I don’t.
Instead, I think about how people who aren’t getting what they need are so much more likely to turn on each other, rather than to each other. How I was feeling mean and petty about the guy having 19 items because of my own grief, anger, exhaustion, and fear. How he shouldn’t have been the target of my feelings, but how the understaffed store should have been. Or the societal forces and structures that makes this grocery store the only one within a reasonable distance of my home. Or how there are hierarchies of grocery stores and people, and we all found ourselves stuck near the bottom of the ladder on a night before we all have to face whatever it is that our week is going to be confronting us with.
Of course this thought is not some lightning bolt of insight. I know this is what we do, and who I should be (am!) really angry with, but in that moment in line I (and Arizona Tea Man) couldn’t do anything about any of those larger forces creating our hard feelings. The only thing I might possibly have been able to change about the situation is that older white guy right in front of me. I don’t think I had the power to change anything fundamental about him, something that would make him aware that it’s just not cool to go through the express line when you have more than 15 items because of how our world would be if everyone ignored things we have put in place to make life better for all of us. But I might have been able to get him, maybe, to go through that line with only 15 items, like the rest of us were doing, and in that way, maybe I could restore the world to just a little bit of order. I’m guessing that’s what Tea Man was trying to accomplish, and I don’t fault him for wanting that. Older White Guy should have gone in another line because the least we can do, when we’re all stuck together in the same shitty grocery store, is play by the same shitty rules that we did not create and cannot control or change. We should do it simply because that’s a way in which we can be nice to each other when we’re stuck together in a place none of us wants to be.
But maybe another thing we can do, when we see one person who isn’t being nice in that way, is to maybe cut them some slack. Maybe we can tell ourselves that that’s what they need today, and if they get what they need today, they might make a different choice tomorrow. Maybe we can all try to be kinder to each other than those who aren’t stuck in shitty grocery stores have been to us. At the very least, maybe we can take some small comfort in hanging onto our humanity, the thing that makes us assume that people like Older White Guy are doing the best they can with what they have. We can choose to treat him the way we’d want to be treated if we were having a hard night and just couldn’t bear getting in a long line with all the full-cart people when we have only a few items over the express-line limit.
Because, on a cold, winter night early into the beginning of an oligarchical fascist takeover, this particular Older White Guy isn’t the real enemy, and I want to remember that. I also don’t want anyone to be collateral damage between one angry man trying to buy some Cup o’ Noodles and another one trying to buy some iced tea in a plastic jug. I want us all to hang onto the parts of ourselves that can be generous and expansive, even if only in small ways, even if we’re all going to go on not getting enough of what we want and need. Maybe especially because we’re not going to get enough of what we want and need.
How’s everyone holding up? How are things going in your part of the world? How are you responding to the truly bat-shit things happening in the US right now? What are your thoughts on Older White Dude and Arizona Tea Man? And groceries? (How about them egg prices, right?)
Would love to check in with you in the comments.
And if you’d like more reading, here are a few things keeping me fortified/comforted:
I Will Stay If You Will Stay (Pam Houston) (not sure why Substack is not giving me the kind of snippet you’ll see for the rest of these posts)
“Nearly a lifetime ago, a young Joy Harjo wrote a poem called “She Had Some Horses,” and a young me read it and decided I was correct in my suspicions that women make the world. Today I call on each of us to do just that. To use our hearts and our hands to make micro-countries of love inside this larger country of cruelty.”
“Jacob knew what was being asked of him. He also knew that his own morality—for which the words justice and honor and honesty are only brushstrokes—would not allow him to sacrifice an innocent man’s life for the sake of his own, innocent, life.” (This is a “just trust me”)
“I’m talking to the able-bodied people who live in cities, have access to transportation and extra spending money and still have single toothbrushes overnighted to their house. AKA, many of my wonderful, beloved friends.”
“choosing a little life is an act of defiance. it’s a way of saying, i will not measure my worth by how much i achieve or acquire. i will measure it by how deeply i live.” (Go just for the Frog & Toad and Beatrix Potter illustrations, but do read the words and get to the end for great book and movie recs.)
”I often tell my students that you have to write into the meaning of your work, that you can’t know everything until you’ve stacked up some pages.”
“Being outdoors and working in close relationship with the natural world teaches me humility. I am not the center of all of this. I am a participant in an ecosystem that is much larger than I am and I find great comfort in not being in charge.”
Take care of yourself and your people. Sending love.
Thanks for the elegy for my guilt. I am going to be quicker to forgive myself and everybody else the next time I find them or myself being the over-the-limit shit/shits in the 15-item-limit line. Great think/ thank piece!
Love the pics you took. I am not an older white dude but I push the express limits occasionally along with other rules. You have given me food for thought. Am I a privileged middle aged white lady or a badass or both?