It was early for most people, but since I’d already been up for a couple of hours with our kids, it felt more like ‘late morning’ to me as I arrived at Trader Joe’s.  I got the very first spot in the parking lot, which reminded me of the day’s true time.  I got my cart, put my brought-from-home bags in it, and walked inside.   Less than a minute later, I heard an older woman say this to a TJ’s employee: “I can’t find anything since you moved everything around.”  Quite earnestly, the employee replied, “Would you like my help locating something?”  “No,” she said, “I’ll find it.”  Then she walked away.  I laughed to myself about that interaction and thought it would probably be the most interesting one of the shopping experience.  But my cashier had other plans.

There were three open checkout lanes, and each had one customer nearing the end of the transaction.  One customer brought out a checkbook, so fuck that one.  The second cashier seemed to be bagging pretty slowly, so I got into the third lane.  “Did you check the eggs?” the young man behind the register asked the customer.  “Yes, thank you,” she said.  “They’re eggceptional,” he replied.  He glanced over at me, and I shook my head at him.  You see, I consider myself a punster and therefore have (shopping) carte blanche to express my likes and dislikes of puns.  I had a little smile, as if to say, “Oh man, that’s a bad one but I’ll give you props for trying it out.”  He must’ve taken my look and shaking head to mean, “I wholeheartedly approve of what you’re doing and would feel cheated if you didn’t continue down this path o’ puns.”

“I hope they’re eggsactly what you were looking for,” he added.  The customer smiled and continued loading the bags into her cart.  Undeterred, he continued: “I’m not eggsaggerating!”  She smiled again, and he added a timely and appropriate one: “You’re egging me on.”  I offered an approving nod for that one, proving that I hadn’t given up on him yet.  He made a joke to her about liking his job, especially since they don’t do drug testing.  It fell pretty flat, so he went back to what he thought was his bread and butter: “Those bags are heavy, so you butter lettuce help you out.”  I liked the play on words, but considering she didn’t have lettuce there, it didn’t quite work for me.  Still undeterred, he followed up with his worst of his shtick: “I’m really milking this!”  I shook my head again and added some closed eyes this time, clearly stating my inner monologue of, “That was a bad one and you should’ve probably quit a while back.”

The lady left and it was my turn to face the famed punning cashier of Trader Joe’s.  We greeted each other and while he was scanning my items, he asked if I had any awesome plans for the weekend.  “Not really.  I just plan on willing the Lakers to another victory tomorrow night,” I said.  “Yeah, that was a good game last night,” he said.  “It was all me,” I told him, “I sat in the right position and wore the right shirt.”  He laughed, and I mentally patted myself on the back for illustrating that I had more than puns in my repertoire.  “I write the Lakers a lot of letters, but they never write back,” he said.  I smiled, though I was unsure of where he was going with this.  “Seriously,” he said, “I’ve written them a bunch of times and haven’t even gotten a ‘Thank you for your letter’ email in response.  At least the Green Bay Packers gave me that to thank me for being a fan.”  “That’s too bad,” I said (and I really sold it).  He then picked up the mini watermelon I was buying.  “I have meloncholy,” he said.  “Ya know, if you had a picture of a collie to hold up next to it, you’d be a regular Carrot Top,” I said.  I didn’t mean that as a compliment, but he smiled and thanked me with some bad carrot pun that I fortunately can’t remember.

Everything fit in the two bags I brought except for some milk and chicken broth.  He grabbed a paper bag for those items and said, “There’s not too mushroom in your bags.”  As with the butter lettuce comment, there were no mushrooms involved, so my appreciation of the pun was dampened by the lack of relevancy.    That said, it was still a high note after some of the other ones, and I was happy to see him go out on top.  But he just couldn’t help himself.  “Oh broth-er,” he said, pointing to the chicken broth.  I gave a polite smile, and we wished each other nice weekends.

Overall, I appreciate what that guy brings to the table.  Sure, there were some groaners and forced lines in there, but he was like a comedian trying out new material at some small clubs before his Comedy Central special.  The next time someone actually has butter lettuce or mushrooms, he’ll be ready and get genuine smiles or even laughs in return.  He was honing his craft, and there’s no problem with that. I hope he appreciated my non-verbal feedback and would rather I express disapproval than not carrot all.