There's just something about the weird lighting, the narrow aisles, wide carts, and that smell of deli fried chicken. It smells just like the chicken your grandma made...but we all know it's not even in the same culinary universe. Does anyone even buy it?
Add in the long lines, uncontrollable carts, grumpy zombie-shoppers, those signs that never have the item you're looking for on them... And the basic fact that you're engaged in a never-ending task of buying food...only to need more in a matter of days.
** Sccccrrreeeeaaaammmm!!! **
In my fantasy world I float through the grocery store happily choosing healthful foods for wonderful home-cooked meals. But, in reality, I feel I'm sucked further and further into the abyss with every step down those over-lit aisles.
It might be the music. I thought it was bad when it was dominated by my mom's string section-heavy/no-lyrics "beautiful music". Now it's morphed into a hit parade of my youth. I get to hear Billy Joel, Blondie, John Denver, The Police,... I find myself either feeling melancholy over some high school crush, or controlling the impulse to dance down the aisle because 'I just LOVE this song!!'
Either way, it's mortifying when I think of it, which I do. Something about being in a grocery store makes my thoughts turn dark and depressing.
I don't have to be there long before time starts curving in on itself. What year is it? Who am I? Where am I going in life? Why did I even come to this store?
---
Stay in a grocery store for any length of time and you will find yourself caught up in a full-on, soul-crushing, mind-numbing, existential crisis. You'll be pondering the futility of existence as Kansas tells you that "All we are is dust in the wind" over the 1700 store-wide speakers.
In these moments it's important to refocus on the task at hand. Get back to your list.
(Heaven help you if you forgot the list.)
Quick! Grab a cart. Don't even bother testing for bum wheels...they will just spontaneously manifest later, anyhow. Fight the buggy's desire to list to starboard, and start barreling into the fray...
Over in the produce section you'll test your reflexes when you narrowly miss causing a huge pile of apples from tumbling to the floor, then spend five minutes cursing a plastic bag whose opening you can't find.
You stare down the Little Debbie cakes while spraining your brain to remember if you have Turmeric at home or not. (You do - 3 bottles...but you go ahead and buy some...just in case.) It doesn't help that you looked before you left the house...because you suddenly aren't positive if the check mark meant 'yes, we need it', or 'yes, we already have it'.
You try to steer around the perimeter of the store like shopping experts tell you, but are frequently drawn into the depths of the prepared foods. You waste precious time reading labels trying to decide which items are the least terrible for you.
Does it have more than five ingredients? Can you pronounce any of them? Is it's shelf life longer than your life expectancy? Are the first 7 ingredients various forms of sugar-by-another-name?
You risk hypothermia in dairy looking at 800 kinds of yogurt; scanning the neat rows repeatedly. All those options, yet they don't have the kind you like. You wait for the guy bogarting the door to the case where your Organic 2% milk lives. Will he ever make up his mind? "Really?", you think, "In his 50 plus years he hasn't determined his preferred milk?" (Grocery Store Rule: If there's one other person in the aisle with you, no matter how long the aisle is, they will always go directly to the spot you're headed.)
You waste 10 minutes hiking back to produce because you forgot the garlic...even though it was on the list. The list you painstakingly put in order by store layout. But, you wrote garlic too small and missed it.
You manage to bypass the ice cream sandwiches, the candy aisle, and that Cozy Shack rice pudding you'd trade your best friend for. All you've got to do now is check out and leave. Yay!
Wait. Not-so-yay.
There are 23 overflowing carts waiting for the real-live-human-being checkers, so you head for the self-checkout area.
You run the gauntlet of the dreaded impulse buys while you wait your turn. (Weren't these machines supposed to make this all go faster? But people are waiting for a manager to reset the machine, or check their i.d.'s to buy beer, ...) Candy bars call out to you. Gum. A clever 10-in-1-toolkit. Mini-sized q-tips. Do you need these??? For only .43 cents can you pass them up?
It's finally your turn and you expertly swipe your card, enter your frequent shopper number, organize your basket and begin swiping your items. The shrill machine-voice continuously says: "Bag item!" "Bag item!" "Bag item!"
You hear some crazy woman answering: "I did!" "I did already." "Yes, I did too, already bag it!!!"
You realize that's no crazy woman. That's you!!
You are starting to rationalize that, maybe, you deserve a little pick-me-up piece of chocolate after all of this exhausting arguing with a machine.
That's when you notice you're bagging your groceries into a plastic bag. Doh!!! You remember that your reusable bags - all 290 of them - are still in the car. You pay penance by buying 3 more.
Phew. Finally done. You, practically, run for the exit.
---
Just as you start the car, you remember 2 things you came to the store for, but forgot.
Sigh.
Then you're hit with crushing regret: Why, oh why, didn't I buy that rice pudding!?
If you've discovered the secret to, genuinely,
enjoying grocery shopping, please share your
tips. (Or your drug recommendations.)
This is how I wish I felt at the store:
This is more how I really feel:
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