Freaking Hassle--Errands

I had a friend point out to me that everything’s a freaking hassle these days, and she’s absolutely right. I remember as a little girl that I’d spend one day a week following my mother from place to place as she took care of the family errands. Now that I’ve become that mother with the requisite list of to-do’s, I’m astounded at how many nights, lunch hours and weekends it takes me to perform the seemingly simplest of errands. But that’s just the point—nothing is simple anymore, nothing is quick.


When making a purchase, you’re now required to answer a bevy of questions before they’ll let you pay. Would I like to save 10% by applying for our store credit card which features an annual fee and a nominal interest rate of 34.8%? Can we add you to our preferred customer list by giving us your email address, physical address, two phone numbers and the names and ages of all your children? Would I like to purchase the extended warranty with that? One year, three year or six year warranty? Then when I tell them “no”, the adolescent checker gets ticked (probably because she gets a commission on everything she can up-sell), and she says, “Fine. Then just swipe your card here and enter your zip code, then choose if you want cash back or not, then push the green button if you approve the amount being charged.” All this to buy a gallon of milk.

I watched an elderly woman ahead of me work through the process, and it took even longer because she couldn’t hear or see well and she kept having to ask the cashier to repeat the questions. It’s no wonder my grandmother has nightmares about the grocery store. I share her fears--I’ve seriously dreamed that preferred customer offers have chased me down the paper goods aisle, tackled me and stuffed me in the frozen foods section.

Today I learned that, when it comes to dry cleaning, there are levels of clean. I thought that there was just dirty or clean, but apparently that’s just crazy talk.. If you premium cleaning, you get spot removal, pre-soak and green-wash (which I hope means it’s environmentally friendly as opposed to the color green because I’m dropping off white shirts.) If you want the standard cleaning treatment, you lose the pre-soak and the fancy soap, but they thrown in spot removal free of charge. The basic involves an oriental woman taking your clothes to the irrigation ditch out back and scrubbing them on a rock. By the time they explain the services and finish filling out the order slip, I probably could have washed them, ironed them and pressed them if I was the type of woman to do that sort of thing.

Two errands, I’ve only crossed two things off my list, and it’s time to pickup my kid from school—except that I don’t normally have to pick him up so I’m not aware that I’ve approached the school from the wrong direction until angry moms start honking at me and throwing rude gestures out their windows (I hope she covered her toddler’s eyes with the other hand before she did that!) I flip around and follow the train of cars as they snake through the parking lot. I see my son walking out of the school and I stop when an unfriendly teacher wearing a orange hunter’s vest approaches my car and motions for me to roll down my window. “There’s no stopping in the pick up line,” she tells me. “But my son is right there!” I say, pointing at him, and laying on the horn for good measure. She waves her hands around, “Make the circle until he is in the pickup line—then you can stop.” She points to a line of children who look exactly like the taxi-cab line at Caesar’s Palace. The cars pull up in front of the line, like a merry-go-round, stopping when their child is at the head of the line (or the music stops, it’s hard to tell which.) Apparently, I’m supposed to enter the holding pattern until my kid decides he’s ready for me to pick him up. Screw that! I drive away from the teacher-cop and pull up on the curb, straddling the sidewalk—I didn’t buy this gas guzzling SUV for its hood ornament! I start honking and waving at my son, who is so embarrassed that I’m pretty sure he won’t ask for a ride home again--which is just fine with me because I’ve got to ditch a few of these freaking hassles that I used to think were simple errands. I’m not sure I can do without the milk, but I’m going to start reading the labels before I buy clothes and I’m going to remember to get cash from the bank to avoid the debit-card time drain. Of course, getting cash at the bank is it’s own hassle, but that’s a post for another day.

I want to hear from you! What’s the biggest freaking hassle in your life?