Take one for the team

Ugh I had to do what I swore I wasn’t going to do….run out of a cooking necessity and have to go to the grocery store the day before Thanksgiving. As expected, it was insane, but there was something different about the shopper population: it was 95% males. Read: grocery amateurs!

Yep, women sent men to the store to purchase last minute items while they continued cooking. Kids were running wild, items were strewn all over the floor thanks to those kids, buggies were parked and abandoned in the middle of the aisles, and I got asked by no less than 5 men about the location of certain items.  Chaos, mass chaos.

I had to help a jerk man locate his three kids and once all were found he grumblingly told me he was “taking one for the team and doing a woman’s job”!!!!! I bit my tongue–hard.

I arrived home (35 min later than expected) to unload the groceries and Philip was still hard at work cleaning the house. (That’s how we roll.)  I told him that I would take one for the female team and never send him to the store during prime holiday rush times.  It’s a pain in the butt for primary shoppers to fight the amateurs. Plus it takes those amateurs 3x as long to locate the items, call home to verify they found the correct item, and wrangle half a dozen kids.  He was satisfied with this statement and said he will gladly always unload/reload the dishwasher, wax the floors, wash/fold the linens, and dust the baseboards if I handle the crowds.

Wait. That’s a lie, but he did say “deal” so I’ll read into it as I please. 😉

After my grocery experience I had to go to good ole Honey Baked Ham to get the meat for our meal. Fun fact: my sister and I worked at HBH sales counter during the holidays when we were in high school. We are still bonded over that sticky, smelly experience. Another fun fact: I won a TV one year by exceeding a sales challenge! I text my sister some HBH inside jokes while waiting in line and she commended me on “taking one for the team”.

I waited in line for an hour next to the same man who lost his kids in the grocery store!!! UGHHH.  This store was too crowded for his kids to get lost, but they sure were bad. That’s not the point. The point is how full of complaints he was and how he felt the need to tell everyone in the store that he was sick of “taking one for the team and running women’s errands”. Um, 65 people were standing in front of me and 46 of those people were men…yes, I was so bored that I counted the people.

He earned lots of ugly looks from everyone in line, but before I could school him the 4’2, 70 pound grandma standing behind him laid into him.

She expressed everything I had been thinking since dealing with his attitude in the grocery store…..”taking one for the team” is a willingly made sacrafice for the benefit of others. It’s something you do without thought or the need for reward. She got him to admit that over 30 people were coming to their house for thanksgiving and his wife had to do all the cleaning and cooking solo!!  I don’t know if the lecture resonated with him, but it helped shut his mouth.

Everyone has to sacrifice during the holidays whether that’s running errands, traveling, or listening to the same boring stories year after year.  I believe that anyone reading this blog has so many blessings that the sacrifices are ridiculously petty in comparison. We have warm houses, huge buffets of food, healthy family members…seriously, we have an infinite number of blessings.

The holidays are for gratitude and reflection of Gods love for His people. We are here as servants of God and should demonstrate our shepardship by serving those we love. Get off your butt and run errands for the stressed host or the disabled family member.  Be thankful that you have a loving family that needs errands run and that you have a means to run errands (vehicles, money, and nice stores). Use your time waiting in lines to bless the people around you–or to set the Grinches straight. 😉

Happy (belated) Thanksgiving!

The Honey Baked Ham workers and Izzy!