–How are you today?

The middle-aged cashier at Fry's grocery store looks at me with one and-a-half eyes and gives me an awkward smile full of about 75% of her original teeth. Her left eyelid seems to have been frozen in time half-way through a wink sometime back in the mid-80s. Her leathery skin seems to suggest that, since that unfortunate incident with a time machine (or perhaps a vengeful, spell-casting optometrist/warlock?), she's spent the rest of her life chain smoking while glaring directly into the sun with -15 SPF sunblock. Now you're probably thinking that SPF can't go into the negatives, but that's because you haven't seen this woman's face.

I, on the other hand, WAS looking into her face, and my feelings were evenly split between compassion and uneasiness about her mental stability. It wouldn't take long for her to settle my emotional conundrum. I answered her:

—Not bad! How are you?

—Good.

Alright! Uneasiness settled. She starts entering the produce code to ring up my anaheim peppers and then mutters, almost inaudibly, in the creepiest way imaginable:

—Better than I was just a little bit ago.

Her one and-a-half eyes spin towards me and then lock onto me in a suddenly urgent quest to confirm three things: 1) whether or not I heard her, 2) whether or not I knew what she was talking about, and 3) whether or not I was aware that she had gone off her meds, and if so, was I gonna tell the boss?

Unsure what to do and frankly more creeped out than I'd been since seeing Mike Huckabee play the guitar on his show with Ted Nugent, I fumbled around with my wallet to begin the payment process prematurely. By the time she rang all my items up, the amount on the screen read $33.64. She put her hand on the counter and said:

—$66.64.

Rather than confront her about her mathematical Tourrette's (or perhaps dyslexia?), I decided to just trust what the payment screen was telling me, swipe my card, and get the hell out of there without giving her any ammunition for further conversation. After all, maybe 66 looks like 33 when you only have one-and-half eyes.

This is just the most recent in a whole slew of similar experiences in my now 2-year history of going to the Fry's supermarket on McDowell in Scottsdale, but I hope it gives you some idea as to why entering this particular store is like entering an alternate universe, re-living a scene from "Idiocracy," or attending a Nascar event. I've tried going on different days and at different times, but the level of creepiness has always remained consistent. I honestly believe that up to 60% of the staff and 50% of the clientele are no strangers to police reports. I realize every society has its dark underbelly, but why do they all buy groceries at the supermarket that's closest to my house?