This week in "I'm just a stupid Yank"

Up until this past weekend, my trips to the village grocers were limited to one of those small hand-carry baskets in size. Afterall, Liverpool has a Costco, so all my mammoth-shopping needs were taken care of. (As an aside, I'm particularly proud of my recent trips to the mega-warehouse, as, in general, Costco makes me stupid. I'm not sure how they do it - I think the guy at the door checking your membership card also shoots an insanity dart into my ass as I enter - it's the only explanation I can come up with for insisting to the Bride that we really need a gross of frozen jalepeno poppers. And the 20 pound block of jarlsberg. And my body weight in spaghetti sauce.)

Anyway, as this was my final trip to the grocery store before the Bride and daughter join me here in the UK, I decided I needed an actual cart this time. I had noticed on previous trips that the carts all seemed to be chained together, apparently to fend off the village cart theives. I went looking for a loose cart to no avail, and returned to the chained aisle of carts. Each chain went through a little black box attached to the handle, and then linked to the next one in line. I stood there for 10 minutes pushing, poking, squeezing, tugging, and doing nearly any other thing I could think of to figure out how to unhook the end cart before a woman walked up and told me I had to put a pound coin in the little black box's slot (see the slot? Yeah, I didn't either) and it would release the cart - when you return the cart, it gives you back your coin.

Apparently it's some sort of immigrant IQ test that no one warned me about.