You despise the check-out lane.
You’ve just barely gotten through the store with your sanity intact and, exhausted, stumbled to the front of the store thinking, “All I have to do now is buy this stuff and get out of here,” when you’re slammed with candy, gum, cheap toys and all sorts of miscellaneous items meant to tempt children as you check out. Your 3-year-old, on the verge of having a meltdown anyway, starts picking up everything within his reach and asking for it. You silently (and sometimes vocally) curse the designer of the check-out aisle.
It’s a great marketing scheme, of course. Weary parents, worn down by choruses of “Can we get that?” and “I want this!” and trying to get the essentials before the window of nap time passes, are a lot more susceptible to giving in to their children’s last request, if only so that they can earn the two minutes of quiet a bag of M&Ms provides.
I think it would behoove stores to think about adding a couple “parent-friendly” check-out lanes to their rosters. Aisles that contain only books and magazines geared toward adults or boring household items that would interest only the most adverse children. They just might find themselves increasing their business.
What are your thoughts on the check-out aisle? Do you find it to be a problem? How do you handle it, other than continually saying “no?”
So far, it’s not a problem for me (2 boys, ages 4 & 2). Since we almost never eat candy bars and things like that, my kids don’t seem to realize that there are all those delicious things right there. Of course, I’ve also rarely or never bought anything from the checkout aisle while they’re there, so maybe that has something to do with it. Not having TV, they also don’t recognize the logos to a lot of the junk food from advertisements.
This also may have something to do with it — they usually help me unload the cart onto the conveyor belt, so when we get to the checkout lane, they usually are so busy “helping” lift the gallon of milk or the bags of produce that they don’t pay too much attention to the other stuff. Which is good, considering some of the pictures on a lot of the magazines and tabloids!
That’s true, Kathy. My kids usually help me load stuff up too, so that does take away a little of the candy/gum/toy lust, but if they find themselves with nothing to do, they’re all over the kid bait. =)
I also totally agree with you on the magazines and tabloids. I should have addressed that as well! I’m horrified by a lot of the cover headlines and even more horrified when I see my 10-year-olds reading them. These sorts of publications should also be banned from the “parent-friendly” lanes.
It sounds like you have very well-behaved kids. The way you always describe them reminds me of my daughters. Now my sons, well, that’s a different story for a lot of reasons. But we’re working on it. =)
“Kid bait” — love that!
Believe me, my kids are not all *that* well-behaved! I conveniently left out the times when my 2-year-old has the screaming melt-downs because I want him to sit in the grocery cart **somewhere** — it doesn’t have to be the seat, but he *does* have to come with me!! — and he for whatever reason doesn’t want to. Or when they’re in the carts that have cars in the front for fun, and he climbs out five times when we’re in the store; and climbs on top of the car when all the groceries are on the belt and I’m waiting for them all to be rung up so I can pay for them.
I do get a lot of compliments on the kids, but I gotta tell ya — if my kids are “well behaved”, I shudder to imagine what the checkout ladies think “average” or “ill-behaved” children act like. Of course, I see **all** that my kids do, and most of the time my kids aren’t driving me nuts in public, so that’s probably much of the reason. Sometimes, I do pat myself on the back that they are pretty well-behaved… but then there are the other times when you just gotta muscle your way through the day and know that once you get in the car, and especially once you get home, at least nobody else sees the kids acting like that!
Not saying they’re bad all the time, but it’s like they’re really good for a while, and then they get craaazy for a smaller, but much more memorable, period of time. That’s life!