Bad shopping experience

Two days ago I was feeling energetic and so decided to brave going shopping with Zarya.  It's hard to carry a baby and groceries at the same time, so usually I do my shopping while she's napping on Saturday mornings.  But it was mid-week and we needed diesel and some things at a store (not the big market, but an actual store), so off we went.

I pulled up to get diesel, and was met by not just one, and not even two, but three attendants.  I guess they were bored.  One of them promptly began filling our tank.  Another leaned into my open window, hanging onto the glass, and getting right in my face (personal space! personal space!) to peer back at Zarya over my shoulder.  The third one ran around to the other side of the car, where I had left the back door unlocked after putting Zarya in her carseat at home.  She actually opened the door and started to try to grab Zarya out of her carseat.  Zarya, seeing a total stranger suddenly appearing and trying to grab her, began crying.  I finally got the attendant to close the door, although she still plastered herself to the glass window and continued to scare Zarya, who therefore continued to cry.

The lady inches away from my face began berating me for being an awful mother. "Why do you put her so far away from you in the car?  You should be holding her!" (Yes, because holding your child while driving a stick shift on bumpy dirt roads with crazy motorcycle drivers swerving all over is very responsible.)

"Well, if you can't hold her, at least put her in the passenger seat next to you!" (Yes, of course Zarya would stay there, sitting nicely in her seat, never trying to crawl out the window, grab the gearshift, or anything like that.) "She's crying because she's hungry, you need to nurse her!"

(Please don't try to grab my breast to make your point, ma'am, and no, she's crying because she's scared.)  "If she's crying and she's not hungry, give her hard candy to suck on!"  (Excuse me, but I don't think it's wise to give a seven-month-old hard candy.)

At which point our tank was finally full and I drove away to park and enter the store.

Inside, a store worker tried to take Zarya from me when she saw me enter and grab a shopping basket.  I explained that Zarya might cry because she didn't know her.  She cheerfully accepted this and carried my basket instead and helpfully lugged it around the store for me, adding items I pointed out.  At the checkout stand, the woman at the cash register was friendly, cooing over how sweet Zarya was and how healthy she looked.  "Your baby is so fat!" she exclaimed.

However, there was also a man standing there, leaning against the checkout stand.  He was a customer, I think, although he didn't have any items with him.  He smelled like alcohol and repeatedly tried to grab Zarya from me, ignoring my protests against this.  Since he was holding his phone, of course Zarya was kind of fascinated by this (she loves electronics).  Again ignoring my attempts to tell him to not give it to her, he offered it to her and she wanted to grab it.  So then he was trying to take her from me again and she didn't want him to take her, but she wanted his phone, which he was trying to give her, so it was all rather messy and obnoxious.

The friendly store worker carried my stuff out to our car for me and was very kind, telling me to have a lovely day and congratulating me again on such a pretty baby.  Maybe she'd noticed how irritated and frazzled I was and was trying to make up for the frustration caused by others, I don't know.  But whatever the case was, she was very sweet.

Since that store didn't have everything we needed, I then went on to another store to try to get the rest of what was on my list.  The workers there were all great, and they had a few more things I needed, but not all. So then Zarya and I tromped onwards to the third and final store with that sort of stuff in town, where we succeeded at finally finding baking soda (Musoma is apparently almost entirely sold out of baking soda and have been for weeks), but failed at getting popcorn (Musoma is officially, completely sold out of the nice kind of popcorn).  I had no complaints about the workers there, so it all ended okay.

I think I'll continue doing my shopping on Saturday mornings without a baby in tow.