I didn’t always hate going to the grocery store. In fact, there was a time when I quite enjoyed it. That all changed when I arrived in suburban Washington DC, which as you’ll recall, is where I live.
There are two choices available to us here in sWDC: Giant and Safeway. No angry letters, please. I know all about Shopper’s Food Warehouse (which incidentally, is NOT a warehouse, but nonetheless conjures up images of my just-bought food having sat on a dusty shelf for God-knows-how-long before being purchased) and Food Lion (which I’ve been wary of ever since I bounced a check there in my mis-spent youth). I hold out hope for the long-promised arrival of Wegman’s, which is the best grocery store ever in the history of the world, but the closest one right now is a 55-minute drive without traffic, and I have enough trouble getting home in the evening in time to let Dino out to pee.
In our former abode, my Domestic Cave-Mate Jet Screamer and I preferred Safeway, although the Giant was closer. But the Safeway had better produce, brighter lighting, and didn’t have birds flying around INSIDE THE STORE.
But the best thing about Safeway was fun we had inventing imaginary lives for its employees, and then would talk about the employees and their lives as if we were all old friends. Our particular favorites were Joe C. and Troy B. Joe C. used to work at Giant, where Jet Screamer noticed that he was a “looky-loo”, a particular breed of presumed-gay man who will sort-of check you out, but not REALLY, and will avert his eyes the moment he’s discovered looking. Joe C. is not wholly unattractive, though he’ll never grace the cover of the fireman’s calendar, and he feels compelled to keep a stringy, barely-visible mustache which does him no favors. Still, he has a pleasant, friendly manner and is a splendid example of what a grocery store employee should be.
While Joe C. was still working at Giant, we saw him one day at the pet store with Troy B. This is what put the notion in our heads that they were a couple, and when we later saw them BOTH working at Safeway, we couldn’t have been more delighted. Troy B. was probably a cute thing at one time, but now has the look of someone who has had one too many hangovers, smoked more than he should, and spent too much time in the sun. He bleaches his hair, and always looks as if he’s just had a whiff of something unpleasant. All in all, we find him completely wrong for Joe C. All the better to spice up our breathless tales of Joe C.’s and Troy B.’s activities, charting the success of a shopping trip by whether Joe C. was cashiering or working the Service Desk (a sign of his standing among the supermarket employees’ community, we imagined), or whether Troy B. had been spotted sneaking a cigarette or overheard saying something bitchy or asinine (as when he was overheard telling a co-worker that he had just bought a “two-story one-level house”).
Now Jet Screamer and I live in a new neighborhood, and as it happens, the Giant has the better produce and brighter lighting. And more children. LOTS of children. Children in droves, so thick I’m forced to wonder if they’ve been taken there to roam free while their parents are at work. I tried the new local Safeway for a while, out of brand loyalty, but found myself wondering why, at the busiest times of day, they would staff EVERY 15-item-or-less aisle, and have only ONE regular aisle open. That’s all right if you’re stopping in for a lemon pepper-roasted chicken, or carton of Dulce de Leche ice cream (2 for six dollars!) but it won’t do for a weekly shop when you’re trying to hurry home to poor Dino.
The great attraction of Giant, I thought, was the addition of Self-Checkout lines. I suppose they were invented to make the checkout process quicker, but the plan seems to have backfired along the way. So far, I have found two major problems:
1) I am smarter and quicker than the checkout scanner. As so often happens when I am confronted with technology, I soon find the quickest and easiest (i.e. laziest) way to make it operate. With the self-scanner, this means that I often scan an item and shoot it down the belt, then stand furiously waving the next item in front of the scanner while the machine “catches up”. Which it does just in time to catch two waves of said item, thus charging me twice and necessitating a visit from the roaming troubleshooter, who ALWAYS looks disgruntled.
2) The checkout scanner is smarter than everyone else. Last evening I stood for fifteen minutes behind someone who was having trouble getting a “read” on their child’s box of Nerds candies, and then when they finally DID get a read, took an additional ten minutes figuring out how to pay with a credit card.
Aside from my self-scanning troubles, any trip to Giant is marred by the presence of children, who in my opinion should either be penned up outside while the adults shop, or not brought in the first place. For such potent little bundles of energy, they sure do walk slowly. And the slower they walk, the less sense they seem to have that they might conceivably be in someone’s way. And when made aware that they are, indeed, in someone’s way, they seem to have little idea of what to do about it, except to stare dully at you until you exasperatingly fling your cart in a different direction to avoid their relentless, directionless march.
Jet Screamer has had an idea, that one should immediately go to the cookie aisle upon entering the grocery store, and snag a package or two of Keebler Fudge Rounds. These Frisbee-like concoctions can easily be flung about the store and attract the children to one area, so one can do one’s shopping quickly and peacefully (Jet recommends ditching the empty package in the pet food aisle, to avoid paying for it; I myself think it would be a small price to pay to get in and out of the store in under an hour).
That’s all for now. Coming tomorrow, my thoughts on Dr. Phil, who I despise, and my analysis of the Presidential election if the candidates were Captains Kirk and Picard.
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