Weekends we usually take the car out to Metro, sort of a cross between Costco and Safeway, before they started remodeling the Safeways to make them Whole Foods-esque. The sign at the door says children under age ten, nyet, but everyone brings their kids anyway. We go because they have good produce and the prices are pretty good, or maybe for the real Russian atmosphere.
They usually have samples out, a la Costco. One time they were giving away mijiotos and champagne! Today they were giving away espressos. The pretty girl, as they always are here, working the little booth was making one tiny espresso at a time, excruciatingly slowly. Peter and I had a race to see if he made it to the front of front of the fish counter before I made it to the front of the free espresso line. He won and I skipped the espresso.
I have never gotten out of Metro able to buy everything in my cart. I've put back sugar because I didn't take enough packages, fruit because I didn't weigh it and wine because it wasn't priced. Today they wouldn't let me buy the fancy Koushmikov tea. "It's not in the system," the clerk said. So he took my pretty canister of tea and put it back on the shelf to display it for the next person who won't be allowed to buy it.
Then the checker made us wait ten minutes so we could watch her fight with the guy who had packaged our whole salmon.
Checker: "Worker! You can't label this trout if it's salmon!"
Fish counter guy: "They are the same price, I've worked here for four years and we always use the term trout and salmon interchangeably."
Checker: "Worker! That's like saying you and I are the same thing and you know that's not true."
twenty-something years of "what have you been up to?" 
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