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Wednesday, August 06, 2003
Buy My Groceries, Please!
During the days of the dot com craze I was loving life. At least the grocery shopping part of it. My favorite place not to be is the grocery store. Having my groceries delivered to my home was great. All I had to do was logon, fill out the order forms with the products I wanted, click enter and I was done. All that was left to do was sit back, put my feet up on the ottoman, look out my bay window and wait for the delivery truck to arrive with my order.Now in the days after the demise of the online grocery stores, I'm left to fend for myself traversing the aisles of the stores that are the harbor of my sustenance.
I always begin in the produce section. How come just as I arrive at the produce aisle the automatic sprinkler begins spraying the vegetables to moisturize them. And why isn't the nozzle pointed at the fruits and vegetables instead of me? Especially when I go to pick up a few things and I'm wearing a suit. This must be the brainchild of the produce manager who sits behind the one-way mirrors in the produce department with his finger on the switch so he can begin spraying so people will not disturb his neatly stacked fruits and vegetables. Next time, I'll get even with him. I'm going to take a head of lettuce from the very bottom of the stack and see what he does when the remaining heads of lettuce start spilling onto the floor.
The frozen food aisle is always a gamble to find what you want. The visibility of the frozen food aisle is about 3 to 5 feet. The freezers are so cold that crystallized water clouds the air as your fellow shoppers open the freezer doors to select their frozen food entree for the evening's dinner. To get a product from the freezer section requires you to leave your cart at the top of the aisle, zip up your coat, sprint to the freezer where you think the chicken pot pie is, yank open the door and pull out the box. Now you race back to your cart at the same time simulating a NFL tip drill juggling the pot pie so the box doesn't stick to your fingers. As you near the cart, you extend your arms to drop the frozen container into the wagon. Your fingertips burn as you watch the box tumble to the bottom. You wince as the pain travels from your fingertips through your wrists. If your fingers stick to the box you get to make a bonus trip to the emergency room to have your phalanges re-grafted from the skin that was stuck to the box after it thaws.
Unforeseen detours can make for unwanted delays while shopping too. As I make the turn from the cereal aisle to the condiment aisle, I quickly notice there are two yellow caution cones. They are inscribed "Caution, Wet Floor" in seventeen languages with a graphic of a stick man falling on his posterior. I gingerly tip-toe down the aisle so I don't replicate the stick figure and slip and bust my head on a pickle jar.
As I round another corner someone whacks me with one of those steel cage shopping carts. Someone should sell insurance for the bodily damage that is inflicted on others by negligent cart drivers. They should require people who use these shopping carts be licensed. I can't tell you how many bruised ankles and knees I've gotten because the people driving the carts are looking at the shelves and can't decide what type of antacid or three cheese spaghetti sauce to buy. These people are dangerous. They are allowed to take these steel-wheeled objects and wield them like weapons. A push here and a shove there and pretty soon someone makes a run to the first aid station to stop the bleeding. There needs to be a rule that you can only buy what you can carry out of the store in your arms.
What is it with the store brand items packaged in a suspiciously similar packaging to the major brands. People tell me that the store brand looks that way because the major brand actually manufactures the product for the store. The major brand manufacturers put the product in similar packaging as their own brand so more of the "stuff" they make will get sold. If that's the case, why does the store brand of peanut butter have a half inch of gooy oil at the top of the jar when the major brand of peanut butter doesn't?
I've successfully checked off all the items on my list and I'm ready for the next challenge. Checking out. Somehow I always pick the line that moves the slowest. I gauge my progress by people who get in the line next to me at the same time. Almost always they get out of the store before I do. I can always depend on the fact that when I get to be next in line, a problem will occur. The person in front of me has an item that can't be read by the scanner. Uh oh, here it comes. The cashier, with one hand, switches her aisle indicator light from solid to blinking. The other hand grabs the phone and says "price check at register three." If that isn't bad enough, when I finally get to the cashier, the register runs out of tape. And of course the cashier doesn't have one stinkin' roll of register tape to put into the machine. She makes another announcement summoning the manager to bring a roll of tape. He finally gets to the register and what do you think happens next? He can't thread the paper in the register.
Just then a new checkout line opens. The cashier says "can I take the next customer in line?" Everyone knows I'm next in line, but they scurry over to get in line before me. So I stay in the same, still waiting for the manager to install the paper in the register with his thick sausage-like fingers.
I finally arrive at home battered, bruised, and emotionally distraught because the store wouldn't honor my coupon from Sunday's paper for the canned ham and they couldn't even issue me a rain check. Other items that should have been on my grocery list were a bag of ice for my knee and ankle, soothing medicated cream for my fingers, acetaminophen for my headache and a prayer book so I can pray for the return of the good ol' days of online grocery shopping.
Posted by Life's Little Observer
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