October 24, 2022
Greetings from the rookie,
There are few places I feel more incompetent than the grocery store. (I wrote that sentence and then thought about where else I feel incompetent, and the list got pretty long.) I find myself staring at the aisles of food, trying to recall why I am there, and not in any existential way. I mean literally: “Why did I come in here again?”
I’ll confess I have gotten a little out of practice when it comes to shopping for food. I have deferred to someone in the household far more skilled than myself. My few weak attempts have resulted in the wrong size, the wrong vegetable, the wrong brand, or worst of all, returning empty-handed.
This has caused me to make multiple trips, which is complicated because rather than risk looking stupid to the cashier who just sold me a bag of lentils an hour ago, I’ll go to a completely different grocery store to buy the brown sugar I intended to purchase the first time. Dark brown sugar, not light. Right?
If I’m honest some of the confusion stems from the fact that I don’t cook, so most of the time I don’t know the purpose of the item I have forgotten, or can’t find, or misremembered as lentils. I didn’t think this could get more embarrassing, but somehow it has.
To counter this deficiency, I go armed with a list, written with specific details, and I don’t buy anything that doesn’t match the list. This doesn’t leave a lot of room for modifying in the face of confusing choices. ‘Confusing Choices’ would be an excellent name for most grocery stores.
As is my nature, I have searched for something else to blame for my inadequacy. I had to go back in time fifty years, but there you see my level of dedication to defend my self-esteem.
The grocery store I grew up with was more like going to your next-door neighbors for something. There was one just down the street in any neighborhood. There was a kid in every aisle putting away cans of things or sweeping up, and they knew where everything else in the store was and would walk you to that place and make sure it was what you came in for. If there was some doubt, you could use the phone that sat on the deli counter to call home and check.
There was a sensibility to the layout of the store. It was designed so you could navigate to where you needed to without being manipulated into whole environments that had nothing to do with what you came in for. Which is why no one came in for brown sugar and left with a folding chair.
The clerk at the cash register already knew you, and probably knew what you came in for. They punched the price of the purchase into the register, and then they made change for you by doing the math and counting the money back into your hand.
There was a kid collecting your groceries at the end of the checkout stand, assembling them into a paper grocery bag. He offered to carry them to your car for you, and then put your shopping cart away. You probably knew his name, and whether he’d been in trouble lately.
The person who owned the store probably worked at the meat counter or helped run the cash register. Maybe you chatted with the person at the bakery counter about bread. There was a conversation about the neighborhood, the weather, about the best cut of meat for when company comes for dinner.
There are stores like this still, but you know exactly where they are in your world and they are the exception, not the rule. I realize I’m romanticizing an era that is a few generations gone, but there you see the extent I’ll go to distract you from the first sentence in this piece.
I’ll admit I get intimidated by the process sometimes. The coupons and flyers and the membership cards and the convoluted pricing. A quarter for the shopping cart. Paper or plastic bag, or no bag, or use these empty boxes, or pay for a bag. Find it yourself. Check yourself out. Bag it yourself. Carry it out yourself. If you have a complaint, text it to yourself.
Recently I saw that one of the big box stores offers an app so that you can find things while shopping. In one way it is a great answer to a common problem. It is also a troubling commentary on what we have accepted as normal.
I know I could skip the whole experience and just do all my shopping from my iPhone, have it delivered to the house, or if I’m feeling really adventurous, pick it up at the curb. I suppose this would be better than going to the store for brown sugar and coming home with lentils and a folding chair. Maybe this is why grocery stores have evolved this way; because people like me cannot be trusted to go out in public.
This really isn’t a complaint about the impersonal, confusing and discouraging process of going to buy a pound of artichokes, or whatever it was. I’ll confess I’d rather have a friendlier experience, but that isn’t the real problem. I am. I will be more involved with turning groceries into food. I can make any of these stores more familiar just by going more often, making a bunch of mistakes, and going back anyway. In that process, I will learn the names and faces and whatever the new traditions are. It’s only as big of a problem as I allow it to be.
I will still miss Hamady sacks though.
Hope this finds you getting what you came for,
David
Copyright © 2022 David Smith
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