Customers Like Causing A Stink

At the grocery store where I work, we offer motorized scooters with attached baskets for shoppers who have limited mobility. Whenever a customer finishes shopping and drives the scooter out into the parking lot, it is required that one of the courtesy clerks — fancy name for baggers — has to accompany them and drive the cart back in.

I was bagging for a rather infamous duo. These two regulars, father and son, have the reputation for being the smelliest customers to ever shop at our store. To be fair, they both are senior citizens, so I shouldn’t bash them for personal hygiene — I have firsthand experience through helping my grandparents that bathing is not an easy task — but these two rivaled a clogged truck stop gas station toilet on a hot and humid summer day.

As the cashier finished up the transaction, I tried to breathe as little as possible while loading their groceries into their scooter’s basket. The father usually rides it as the son helps grab things off the shelf.

For some odd reason, though, today, the father insisted that his son drive the scooter to the car while he hoofed it with his cane. As the dad slowly picked himself up off the chair, he bent over just far enough to reveal his adult diaper sticking out of the top of his britches. Like a train wreck, I knew I should look away, but my eyes were drawn to it. I saw, much to my abject horror, a brown skid-mark neatly drawn down the middle.

As we started our slow, agonizing walk to their vehicle, I began to dread what would come next. We reached it, and I helped load the groceries into the trunk as the son helped his father into the passenger seat. After I finished, the son turned and thanked me, to which I smiled and nodded as my eyes watered from both the stench that surrounded me and the knowledge of what I was about to do. A final surprise waited for me, however. As the son stepped into the driver’s side, his shirt rose just enough to reveal that he, too, wore an adult diaper, sporting — you guessed it — a wonderful brown line right back and center. My eyes turned to the cart’s seat, which for the past hour or so had been occupied by both men.

Now, you must understand that our carts were designed with “safety first” in mind. In the padding of the chair is a simple pressure switch. It acts as a fail-safe, immediately shutting down the scooter if it doesn’t have a rump placed firmly on top of it.

I cursed the designer of that safety measure with every fiber of my being as I rode that foul scooter back to the store.