I needed to go shopping to pick up a few odds and ends for the house. I had carried my backpack, because I’m eco-friendly like that, and I didn’t want a plastic bag. The only annoying part about bringing a backpack for shopping is that you have to put it in a locker before entering the grocery store.When I arrived at the store, there were no lockers. I went at “prime” shopping time, so I wasn’t surprised that this would occur. While I was waiting for a locker, a fight broke out in the store.
Several women were shouting, pushing, and being all rude to each other just inside the store, but outside of the locker area. There were dropped food items, people calling each other bad words in Korean, women shouting at each other in a very “Jerry Springer” manner. (Well, maybe not exactly.)
From what my limited vocabulary could gather, one woman was angry at the younger ladies about something they had said. There was another older woman pushing the angry lady away from the younger ladies, who were cursing and itching to fight the angry woman. I think there might have been something involving the angry woman’s son and perhaps the younger ladies boyfriend. Not sure if it was the same person, or if that was just a tangent to what they were angry about.
Anyway, with all the tussling and fighting getting everyone’s attention, no one was leaving the store. They were in front of the door, so while I had a great view of the action, no one was leaving for me to get their locker. I had no choice but to sit around and watch the fight. I wasn’t alone. There were probably about 10 employees of the store that had poked their heads out from various places to watch these people yell and push. No one was saying or doing anything, of course, but they did have a shocked look of concern on their faces that said, “Wow, I hope someone else deals with this soon.”
Eventually there were enough people backed up trying to leave the store that the greeter to the store sort of moved the fight over to one side of the doorway. People left the store, and I got my locker. I walked through the store laughing as there were way too many people casually browsing for fruit that just happened to be in earshot of the fight. No one had their camera phone out recording the fight, but I’ll just caulk that up to Youtube being lesser known here. People love to share their condemnation of the fight without actually doing anything about the scene.
By the time I had bought my items and gone back to retrieve my bag, the fight was over. I’ll never know who won, but at least it was an interesting trip to the store.
