My milkshake... is cleaner than yours

It may surprise you to know that I have a few quirks. One of these quirks is that while grocery shopping I cannot take the most forward sitting product on the shelf. I always take the one right behind it, preferably without touching the first product. I do this, obviously, because the first product on the shelf is dirty and those further back are fresher and less likely to have been touched by the heathens. If there is only one product left on the shelf I just refuse to buy it.

The other day I saw something that shook me to the core. While shopping at my local Target, about to pick up some milk, I saw a woman take out three gallons of milk, put one in her shopping cart, and then put the other two back. She didn't even put them back in the right order! The dirty milk was now the second milk on the shelf, and the fresher milk was in front!

Well first of all, fuck this bitch. She obviously has the same kind of sickness as me, really even more of a sickness because she had to take the third goddamn milk on the shelf (what kind of sick person needs the third milk back? A total sicko that's who.), and yet she didn't have the common courtesy to put the milk containers back in the correct order? She obviously doesn't know what she is messing with. You go screwing with the order of things like the dirty milk/clean milk paradigm and you are just asking for fucking anarchy. Good job Lady, you just put us all in mortal peril. She probably doesn't even use a paper towel to open the door in a public bathroom. Amateur.

So, obviously I was in distress by this milk situation. It made me realize that I really cannot rely on the fact that the second milk back will be the clean one. I really was an embarrassment to the vigilance of germ-watchers everywhere. Sloppy bitch in Target had made that crystal clear to me. I realized then, that the only way to be safe would be to go four milks back because no way is anyone sick diligent enough to go back that far. The problem with my new plan was that it's not always easy to reach four products back to get something without taking the other three out first. So I had to take the first three milks out, set them on the floor, and then grab my fourth, assumed clean milk.

Most days that would have been the end to the story. I would have taken the fourth milk, put the other three back and been on my merry way to the cookie aisle. However, on this day the fourth milk back had a smudge on the bottle. Well of course I can't buy the one with a smudge, that milk has obviously been through some shit. Unfortunately there wasn't a fifth milk on that row, which is total bullshit. Obviously Target was trying to slip their smudge-milk by on some poor unsuspecting fool. Well not on my watch Target! I left the smudge milk on the shelf (but turned backwards which is the universal signal for "don't buy this! It's yuck!"), but didn't put the other three milk containers back yet because, in an emergency, if all the other bottles failed their inspections, I could buy the third milk and just wipe it down with Clorox wipes once I got home.

I bent down and began removing the first third containers of milk from the second row and set them down (in order of course since I have respect for germ hierarchy.) I was in luck and the fourth milk on the shelf was smudge free and otherwise unremarkable. So I lifted it out and turned to put it in my cart, but somehow, before I could deposit my milk safely into the cart, it slipped out of my hands, crashed to the floor, and burst open in a white blast of clean milk goodness. At that moment a Target employee walked by and found me standing there in a huge puddle, surrounded by six full gallons of milk. Everyone was staring at me like I was the crazy one. I briefly contemplated stuffing a bag of chips under my shirt and going with a "my water broke" story, but I was afraid everyone would think I was totally weird for having white uterus juice and might take me to some scary medical research facility where they would do scientific tests on me and stuff... so I decided to suck it up and go with the truth. I explained that I was just trying to get a clean milk but most of their milk was dirty, so I had to keep testing them and that obviously it was their shoddy milk container craftsmanship that was the problem here and not me.

The Target guy didn't seem that sorry and I was starting to panic, so left with no choice, I grabbed the soggy third milk container and headed off to the disinfectant aisle leaving a milky trail behind me. On the way I gave the lady who started this whole mess a pointed look and held up my dripping container so she could see what havoc she had caused. She just looked away but I could tell she knew what she'd done and that from then on she would follow the rules like a normal person. Walking away I kind of felt like a superhero or something, like I'd really made a difference and that the world would be a cleaner, less germ-infested place because of me.