Measures and weights

That time of year has arrived, when one has no choice but go shop. After navigating the multicultural, dense, unwashed biomass otherwise known as your local Shoprite on Sunday at last the cashier was in sight and all eight hundred ninety seven and a half items are sticking out of all orifices in the shopping cart.

Beady-eyed, patently indifferent store clerk starts scanning in the agriculturals, probably thinking how these people are preparing to spend the rest of the decade in a nuclear fallout shelter, cut off from all civilization. As she swings those bags left and right, all beeping and flashing and blinking like a NORAD situation room, my antenna tells me that something is wrong. Not sure what or how yet, but the number stream just doesn't make sense.

Aha, I say. Are those onions ? -- Why yes, they are ! -- The Chilean Sweet Obscenely Mutated ones ? -- Yup, that's them.

At that point, I had to rehash my memories. I wasn't quite sure if even fertile Chilean soil was capable of producing onions that weigh in excess of a pound. She brings over the manager. I propose calling the Guinness Book of Records, and probably someone with a Geiger counter as well - as we all know, pound-onions are a staple food of the Hulk. After much whining, manager is persuaded to reweigh the bloody thing. And lo and behold - different scale reports only a half of proposed mass.

Long story short, the salesgirl had her umbrella hanging on the scales. It will take a full blown audit from Deloitte and Touche to find out how much exactly of their quarterly earning this girls umbrella was responsible for. And we had to rescan every darn item. But at least this check did not exceed the gross national product of Mozambique.