Your application to join the elite team of customers who make going to the supermarket a most special kind of Hell has been received (for which: thank you) and is currently being evaluated, which usually takes eight to ten business days.

As that processing goes forward, a few hints:

The Parking Lot: Don’t Miss This Opportunity!

It is an amateur mistake to assume that Obstruction begins inside the supermarket proper.

As Professional Obstructors well know, the parking lot and entrance are key areas in which the seeding of rage is most efficiently initiated—Olympic Level Obstructors have even extended this to the entrance to the parking lot itself, rather than the store.

In this area, as in many others, for the most part, the motto Slow is the Key! is your best guideline.  That can apply to:

• Inexplicable Unwillingness to Proceed
• Pulling In/Out of Parking Spaces
• Utterly Irrational Turning/Stopping Behavior
• Backing Up Without Looking (Excessive Speed is also Acceptable Here)
• Taking a Space When Someone Else Already Had Their Signal On
• Pausing to Chat, Gawk, or Assemble Small Model Airplanes
• Unwanted Social/Political/Religious Intrusion
• Using Cart as a Weapon Against Cars/Other People/Imaginary Demons
• The Parking of Your Cart in a Space (Bonus Points for Obstructing More Than One!)
• Disciplining/Abusing Your Child(ren) (Up to and Including Corporal Punishment)

The Entryway

You should understand this to be a target-rich environment (using the Dithery & Inept Guideline) and also an opportunity for teamwork.  You may choose to work alone or with friends, family members, and store employees.  There are three key “accelerants” regarding success here:

• Use/Misuse of Carts/Baskets/Bags (Bonus Points for Bringing Luggage from Home!)
• Extended Socializing with Others (Real or Imagined!)
• The Abrupt “I Forgot!” Pause Regarding Bags/Car Keys/Children/Anniversaries (Bonus Points if People Bump Into You; Double Bonus Points if They Are Injured)

Carts & Aisles

How you navigate the supermarket is obviously the heart of every solid exercise in Obstruction.  As a parallel to Parking Lot Obstruction, you might think of the important aspects here as Parking & Driving.  As elsewhere, you have access to an extensive toolkit—and teamwork also pays off!  Your cart offers you the opportunity to:

• Go Dangerously Fast
• Go Enragingly Slow
• Cause Physical Damage (Bonus Points for Damaging Bodies!)
• Completely Block the Aisle (Teamwork Pays Off Here!)

The Aisles (Along with the Dread Checkout Line) are the perfect place for intrusive, daft, or utterly inappropriate Attempts to Talk.  Some more successful gambits frequently begin with, Do You Know? then launch into:

• What’s in This?
• Who Lincoln’s Secretary of State Was?
• What This Costs?
• Where I Left My Cat?
• If This is Organic?
• Why They Make the Label Lettering So Small?
• How to Make _______________? (Fill in your own dish, the more obscure the better)

As an occasional variation, you may find the inclusion of “Are You Sure You Don’t Work Here?” both effective and entertaining—especially if deployed on someone who is shopping in their bathrobe (again).

Checkout Line & Procedures

This, of course, is your ultimate field of play.  If you, and other members of the team, have worked assiduously, step by step, in every process leading up to Checkout, People will have been properly Primed—likely very close to medical and/or psychiatric crisis.

Please do not take that to mean that your work is largely done and feel you should slack off!

A quick caveat here: While we do not like to discriminate, we think it best that you not use the Self-Checkout lanes if you have an IQ of over 90.  A good rule of thumb: If you know what “IQ” means?  You are likely far too intelligent to be able to do Professional Obstructing in this part of the store.

At Self-Checkout, you can take recourse to some of the strategies used in other areas, supplementing and improvising to work to your strengths.  Classics include:

• Paying in Coins (Bonus Points for Foreign Coins, Insufficient Money, Paying in Pennies, Dropping/Throwing/Swallowing Coins)
• Using the Wrong Card(s) (Bonus Points for Multiples)
• Forgetting Your PIN (Bonus Points for Cards Eaten By Machine)
• Changing Your Mind (Subject of Change May Vary)
• Hitting the Wrong Button(s) (Bonus Points for Resolutely Hitting the Wrong Buttons Multiple Times)
• Breaking/Jamming/Hanging the Machine
• The Mother of Them All: REQUIRING ASSISTANCE (Bonus Points if Management Intervention is Required; Double Bonus Points for Multiple Managers; Triple Bonus Points for Closing the Lane)

While people are most reliably enraged at Self-Checkout, Staffed Lanes offer their own special additional fillips of irritation.  (Please Note: The “Getting on the Express Line with 132 Items,” approach, while both of nostalgic value and still very much in current use, has become a bit of a cliché; you would do better to try something more original.)

Staffed Lanes offer the opportunity to fully combine Slow is the Key! with Inept & Dithery and to then supplement those with Stunningly Selfish & Unaware.  (Please Note: As above, regarding cliché, the “Writing a Paper Check” routine has also been done to death; you’re better than that, aren’t you?)

We can split this into Line, Transaction, and Refusal to Exit.

On line, many of the previously discussed strategies remain effective, with particular emphasis on Trying to Talk and Physical Damage (in this case of course damage may include not merely the cart and other people but their groceries, nearby candy/publications/children).  A rich pool of possibilities is to be found in, Wait I Have a Problem! which—although, again, you are encouraged to improvise—is often followed by:

• This Isn’t Ripe
• My Life Has No Meaning
• I Forgot Something! (Bonus Points for Leaving the Line to Go Hunting & Gathering; Double Bonus Points for Failing to Return; Triple Bonus Points for Failure to Retrieve Children)
• I Can’t Find Terrence! (Bonus Points for Triggering Store Lockdown)
• I Don’t Think This Smells Right (Bonus Points for Loudly Decided Actually That Was the Person Right Behind You)
• I Thought This Would Be Bigger (Bonus Points for the Subsequent Audible Muttering of Obscene Jokes; Double Bonus Points for Sharing with People Nearby; Triple Bonus Points for Whadda You Know? That is Too Funny!)

During the actual Transaction, you have natural allies in store staff (It is beyond the scope of this missive to deal with the matter of Store Employees People Would Kill If They Could Get Away with It).  The Cashier and the Bagger are your primary teammates here, but there will also be several layers of management that can be called into action as well.

The Transaction may also draw on Irritation Strategies deployed in The Aisle, On Line, and at Self-Checkout, supplementing as appropriate with:

• Distracting the Cashier Socially/Politically/Theologically/Meteorologically
• “Discovery” of Unacceptable Items (Bonus Points if They Need Replacement)
• Needing Something Voided
• Arguing About Price/Quantity/Quality/Weather (Bonus Points for Demanding to See the Manager; Double Bonus Points if Several Layers of Management Become Involved; Triple Bonus Points for Do You Know Who I Am?)
• Dropping Something (Bonus Points if It Breaks; Double Bonus Points if the Aisle Needs to Be Closed; Triple Bonus Points for Injuring, Damaging the Groceries, or Soiling the Clothing of Other People)
• Inability to Find Your Rewards Card/Debit Card/Coupon/Self-Respect
• Not Having Enough Money to Pay

Which brings us finally to Refusal to Exit.  The primary locus of this strategy is, of course, the checkout line itself, but anywhere from there to the Exit, to the Doors themselves, through the Parking Lot and back out onto the streets qualifies in this regard.

Refusal to Exit brings together the full trifecta:

• Slow is the Key!
• Inept & Dithery
• Stunningly Selfish & Unaware

Strategies include Blocking the Next Customer by deploying:

• Refusal to End Conversation with Cashier/Bagger/Old Friend/Yourself
• Darn, I Just Remembered!
• Extended Apparent Catatonia
• Would Anybody Like to Buy a Church Raffle Ticket?
• Immobility Born of Personal/Familial/Existential Crisis
• Pausing to Re-Organize Your Purse/Wallet/Driving Schedule/Income Taxes (Bonus Points for Dropping Purse/Wallet; Double Bonus Points if Everything Therein Scatters; Triple Bonus Points for Oh My God! Where’s My Credit Card/Driver’s License/Passport/Birth Certificate; Quadruple Bonus Points if Police Are Required and Nobody Can Leave Until This is Resolved)

We appreciate your taking the time to read this.  As noted, we should have your application processed within no more than two weeks.  Be assured, we are always looking for people to augment our crack team of Professional Obstructors; we take this very seriously.

Please know as well that, while we’ve given you a lot to digest here, in the end, people are not really that difficult to enrage at the Supermarket.