Shopping zombies are multiplying at horrifying rates. I’m talking about people who suddenly stop in the middle of a grocery store aisle and go brain-dead.
If you are standing behind these folks, you can say, “Excuse me. Excuse me. Excuse me.”
You will get no response.
Or, the shopping zombie will slowly turn and look in your direction. Their eyes, however, seem not to focus. They do not see you. There is no recognition you exist, or that they comprehend the meaning of what you have said.
Communication is impossible. After several minutes, the zombie will aimlessly drift away.
Follow at a distance. Be careful, for the zombie may reverse course, very slowly, and come toward you ... arms extended on its shopping cart.
“They must see me,” you will say to yourself. “I am directly in front of them.”
But they don’t see. They just keep coming. They may actually shove their carts into you.
To be clear, I am not referring to distracted shopping, a major problem in superstores.
The distracted shopper will also come to a dead stop in an aisle, but they can be identified by their cell phones, which they hold high to take photographs of items on a store shelf.
This apparently requires that they take several steps back from the shelf or bend at the waist to create a rump extension that effectively prevents others from passing behind them.
The distracted shopper will then begin texting someone — a spouse, friend, relative in a foreign country — apparently explaining why they are sending a photograph of a toilet seat.
As they await a response, a long line of customers, including crying children, may form. This will include gawkers trying to determine why anyone would want to send photographs of a toilet seat to someone else.
Folks waiting in the line, some urgently in need of a toilet themselves, put their carts into reverse, crashing into other shoppers. There are shouts of pain, mumbled obscenities and signs of general distress.
The distracted shopper is unaware of this because, well, they are awaiting a response to their text. They may even begin talking to someone on the phone, describing at length the product they photographed and explaining in detail why they did not bring a measuring tape to the store.
I have tried to ask store employees to intervene in such situations, but they are usually too involved in their own phone conversations to be disturbed.
The distracted shopper is often mistaken for a zombie shopper because both tend to attract highly energized children. It is natural to assume that these children are related to the zombies, but there being no light of acknowledgment in the dead eyes of the zombies, it is impossible to determine if this is true.
At some point, you may see zombie shoppers congregating from all directions at a point in the store, as if communicating telepathically. This occurs when a store employee sets up a stand and begins distributing food samples.
“Mmmmmm, Mmmmmm, Ohmmmmm,” the zombies will moan as they steer themselves toward the freebies.
Unable to reason since they are brain-dead, they crash their shopping carts into each other repeatedly as they mill about the sample food stand with hands outstretched.
Do not go near them. This is your one chance to actually get away and do some shopping with the aisles clear.
Of course, inevitably you will end up in a cash register line behind a zombie.
He will be holding out coupons with expiration dates two years old, or a wad of cash that is inadequate to pay for the items being purchased. Or, my favorite, repeatedly try to slide a credit card through a machine that states, “insert chip here.”
The zombies are multiplying.
But fewer and fewer people seem to notice.
They are too busy texting.
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