The Super-Nice, Friendly, Outgoing Lady Who Works In The Produce Section

There is this super-nice, friendly, outgoing lady who works in the produce section at the grocery store where I shop.  She is so friendly and full of energy and bubbly and happy and sweet.......and I am terrified of her.

I seem to be a natural target for her attention because I am in that grocery store almost every other day with my kids.  One of the things that super-nice, friendly, outgoing people seem to have in common is that they love kids.  And my kids love her.  So when she first started talking to me it was usually because she was talking to them.

But now that she knows me she goes out of her way to be super-nice, friendly and outgoing at me even when I don't have the kids and I can't staaaaaaand it.

It's not that I hate her or anything.  I can appreciate her super-nice, friendly, outgoing-ness as being the antithesis of assholery.  More people should be like that.

It's just that for me, having any kind of conversation with anyone is an ordeal that requires a great deal of effort and energy on my part.  While I may appear to be a smiling, friendly, talkative person I am actually desperately trying to avoid saying anything foolish.  I am desperately hoping that I won't be unable to sleep later because I can't stop replaying some stupid remark I made about someone's hair or something equally unimportant.  It's weird, I know, but it's an anxiety thang.

And unfortunately, Ms. Super-Nice, Friendly, Outgoing Produce Lady's super power seems to be having the ability to trap someone into a conversation that easily lasts a minimum of fifteen minutes.  Seriously.  I have not yet been able to politely extricate myself from her attention in under that time.  I'm pretty sure you don't have to have a mental disorder to find that annoying.

So the other night I needed to go out and buy some garlic.  I didn't have enough for a recipe I was trying and I figured I would just quickly run to the store and back.  But of course when I got there I spied Ms. Super-Nice, Friendly, Outgoing Produce Lady cheerfully stacking apples.

Shit.

She wasn't looking in my direction so I quickly ducked into one of the aisles before she could see me.  I figured I could bide my time checking out next week's specials and head to the produce section when she inevitably has to bring her empty apple cart to the back of the store.

Every couple of minutes I would surreptitiously peek into her section from behind a display of potato chips to see if she had moved yet.  But damn!  She was taking forever!  How long does it take someone to stack some lousy apples???

Apparently, pretty long if that someone is trapping random passersby into conversation.

I had been in the store for twenty minutes and she was still stacking those apples, chatting away to anyone that walked by.  And it's not like she had a hell of a lot of apples.  Did she manage to sneak back and get some more when I wasn't looking?  She must have!  I had officially spent more time avoiding this woman than I would have spent talking to her.  

And it didn't seem like she was going to leave at all.   How was I going to get my garlic?   I just want to make some soup, dammit!!!

Finally I saw that she had cornered a couple of college girls and decided to take my chance.  Keeping myself out of her line of vision I crept up, snatched the garlic and hightailed it out of there.  

I'm sure it must have looked very odd on the security cameras to see a customer case out the produce section for twenty minutes, sneak in there, seize a head of garlic, race out and then promptly pay for the garlic.

Would I go through all this again just to avoid having a conversation with this woman?  Yes.  Yes, I would.  Judging by the looks on the faces of other people she talked to, I made the right decision.  Besides, I prefer to save the ordeal of human conversation for my friends and family who are already aware of how weird I am.