I was at the Safeway on Old Dominion Drive in McLean on Sunday and saw this bugger there. Not only was it rotten and split – yes, way past rotten and soft – but there were ants all over it, which are too small to be visible in this picture, unfortunately.

Safeway employees and managers – every time I am ready to give your store another chance, I see something like this. It doesn’t take much to keep the place looking decent. Is this how you save money? Do you try to reduce shrinkage by waiting until the ants carry everything off to their intricate system of nests somewhere in the building?

Do any of our readers work for Safeway and want to comment? All I can think is that if there is one ant-infested part of the building, there are likely to be others.

Remember the Giant supermarket in McLean? The one with the kitty pee Starbucks? Well, I found myself driving by that store again and needed to pick some things up. The help there is so freaking helpful, it’s unbelievable. Even in the self-check line they have people to bag your groceries. The other supermarkets don’t do this, except possibly the cult-like Bloom stores. Bloom simply freaks me out. It’s like a love bomb, one step away from a low-protein, high-carbohydrate diet, closely followed by a coerced disowning of friends and family.

So there I was, scanning my 20-some cans of cat food and a fellow came up to bag my goods. “Can I have paper bags?” I asked.

He reached under the conveyor, pulled out a few paper bags and through them on the bagging station. “You want paper? You bag it yourself.”

I have no problem bagging my own stuff, but I am curious if Giant has a policy about this or if I simply caught this guy a day before he went postal. He seemed like he could use some cooling down. Maybe Bloom would be a better fit for him. With his attitude, I am sure he would not have a lot of friends to disown.

Have you ever had this happen? Anyone from Giant Food Stores care to comment?