Al vs. The Grocery Store

How I feel when frequenting my local grocery establishment

I had to go grocery shopping last week.  Back in the day when I was a regular grocery shopper, this wouldn't have seemed like such a daunting task.  However, since my husband took over our grocery-related duties about a year ago, I have become blissfully out of practice.  Unfortunately he occasionally goes out of town, leaving me to fend for myself.


On the day I determined that I had officially, completely run out of food, I found myself avoiding the task of grocery shopping all day and instead frantically looking around the house thinking - should I polish the silver?  No, I don't have any silver.  Should I wash the dishes again?  No, that would be absurd.  Should I build a deck?  Finally I acknowledged the fact that I was just being grocery-avoidant and kicked myself out the door with reusable shopping bags in hand.


My anxiety rose dramatically the moment I was in view of the store's parking lot, which was packed.  Parking lot dynamics are pretty fascinating.  Some psychology student should write a thesis about the latent personality traits that manifest themselves when one enters a crowded parking lot situation, particularly during holiday weekends.  My latent trait is overt passivity ("The path of least resistance for me, please!"), in that I will simply drive around in endless circles rather than slowly following people who are clearly approaching their cars and then waiting stalker-like until they load their crap and drive away.  

This represents the opposite of my parking lot assertiveness level

My passivity does not end there, however.  If I am patiently waiting for someone to vacate a space and then some asshole (who clearly saw me waiting) zooms in and takes the spot, instead of engaging in a confrontation, I will simply drive away and continue the endless circling.  However, that is not because I fear righteous confrontations.  Au contraire.  Rather it is because I do not trust people, particularly in parking lots, and I refuse to be a victim of parking lot rage and have some psycho go ballistic and run me over or shoot my dog.

Ima kill your dog!!

During this particular shopping adventure, when I finally parked my car after about ten minutes of pathetically passive circling, I looked towards the entrance and noticed the predictable presence of evil clipboard people.  "Excuse me, do you have a minute?  Are you concerned about human rights?"  "Pardon me, do you care about the environment and continued access to clean air and water?"  Yes, I do.  And no, I am not going to talk to you, nor am I going to give you my personal information and credit card number right here outside the grocery store, because I have not been lobotomized.  Good grief.  


As I approached the entrance, a Greenpeace representative spotted me and said, "You look like a friendly person!"  I informed him quite emphatically that looks can be deceiving and then breezed right past him and into the store.

Thanks very much.  Yeah, it's totally going to Greenpeace.

Once inside, I approached a row of tangled, screechy metal cages on wheels and wrenched one out for myself.  I began rolling the cart aimlessly around the perimeter of the store.  Occasionally I made eye contact with someone (most often a man) who was doing the exact same thing:  wandering in circles, pushing an empty cart, and looking very lost and sad.  We would exchange looks clearly indicating that we were used to someone else taking care of this task and were completely out of our element.


I finally mustered up the nerve to walk down an aisle.  However, about five steps in, my vision shifted to this:

AAAAAHHHHHHHHH....

The over stimulation created by hundreds of redundant, brightly colored products made it impossible for me to focus.  I grabbed a couple of items at random and moved back to the safety of the store's perimeter.  At that point, it occurred to me that I should probably consult the list I'd carefully made for myself to prevent exactly this type of directionless wandering and random purchasing.  Reviewing the list was very comforting and offered me the focus and courage needed to return to an aisle with greater purpose.


In grocery store aisles, my parking lot passivity translates to shopping passivity in that I avoid aisles where lots of people, carts, or any small children are present.  This makes for quite a prolonged and ineffective shopping experience.  Small children are the worst grocery store offenders because they whine, scream, and run around without watching where they're going.  If you don't look out for them, you can totally take one of them out with your cart.  When they are not left to run around like crazed, drunken monkeys, they are frequently transported in the most gigantic structures known to man.

Watch out for these jackknifed across entire aisles, making passage impossible

Due to crowded aisle avoidance and my utter lack of knowledge regarding where things were located in the store, over the course of about an hour I walked a combined distance of approximately three miles to get about thirty items.  In the end, I got all but one item on my list.  I could've gotten the final item if I'd been willing to talk to a store employee, but I wasn't.


Finally, I walked out into the parking lot and promptly realized I had no idea where I'd parked my car.

In conclusion, grocery shopping blows.  I hate it.  I never want to do it again.


Now I would like to share something random.  I just did a Google Images search for "crowded supermarket parking lot," and this is one of the first things that came up:

This has nothing whatsoever to do with any of the words I searched.  It is also ridiculously funny.