What happens to our time?

I'm retired now (have been for several months) but life keeps me busy. So where does the time go? A chunk of it is gobbled up by shopping.

I'm talking mainly here about shopping at Walmart. Today, I visited a Walmart in Johnson City, Tenn., and confronted, as I always do, a jam-packed parking lot, exasperated, tired fellow shoppers and long lines at the checkout registers. An aside: Why is it that Walmart has a dozen-plus checkout lanes but only two or three of them are active?

Here's an attempt at documenting what you must do to buy $67 worth of groceries at the big box store. Nothing scientific here; just my personal take, based on my shopping excursion today, on getting what you want done at Walmart.

Step-by-step shopping at Walmart.

1. Get in car
2. Start car
3. Drive to Walmart
4. Find parking space (not always easy)
5. Get out of car and lock it
6. Enter store and get shopping basket
7. Take out your list (if you have one) and traverse the store (can be several blocks of walking), and get your needed items
8. Find checkout lane where line seems manageable
9. Roll your cart into that lane and wait, wait, wait… Read trashy tabloids while you wait.
10. Watch others in line ahead of you slumping and moaning and sighing in frustration, waiting for their turn at the checkout register
11. When it’s your turn, extract your items from shopping basket and put them on checkout line conveyor belt
12. Watch tired, miserable checkout person ring each item up and put in bag(s) for you
13. Scan your debit/credit card
14. Choose debit or credit. If debit, enter your secret code. If credit, sign your name. (I just scribble mine. Who cares how sloppy or neat you are?)
15. Hit “Okay” at bottom of read-out counter where you scanned your card.
16. Get your receipt (and some useless coupons for items you'll never, ever buy.)
17. Smile when tired, miserable checkout person says “Thank you and have a nice day.”
18. Put all your bagged items in shopping cart.
19. Roll/push shopping basket to your car in parking lot.
20. Unlock the car
21. Load all your bagged items into your car.
22. Start car and pull out (carefully), exiting crowded parking lot.
23. Return home.
24. Stop car. You'll inevitably have an urge to hit the bathroom!
25. Unload all your bagged items from shopping trip, and try to assure your barking dog that he'll have your attention very soon.
26. Put stuff you bought on shelves or in cabinets or in the refrigerator or wherever…
27. Sit down and say (like George Bush famously did on that aircraft carrier) “Mission accomplished!”
28. And then, of course, you have to cook or otherwise prepare the food items you purchased, do the clean up and throw away leftovers. Days later, you’ll make YET ANOTHER trip to Walmart and repeat steps 1-27 above. Long as you're breathing, steps 1-27 are repeated over and over and over…