I go to the grocery store four times a week, at a minimum. Sometimes I go twice a day. Yesterday my groceries weren’t even unloaded before there were three more items on my list for the next time. That’s like when the kid is rummaging in the refrigerator before the supper dishes are even washed. Sometimes I can’t even make it from the store to the car before I think of something else I was supposed to buy. Those are the times when I wish I carried a handy pair of Groucho glasses in the car for a quick disguise. There’s nothing more embarrassing than standing in the checkout line to be greeted by the cashier with, “Back again?”
So, with all these trips to the store, I think it’s safe for me to say that I am a grocery shopping expert. If you ever need someone to testify under oath about the suburban shopping experience, I’m your woman.
Here’s a bit of grocery shopping wisdom:
Most grocery stores are laid out on a similar pattern, with the produce section against the far wall and the dry goods in the center of the store. If that works, there’s no reason to mess with it, right? There’s no need to rearrange. How are we supposed to find the granola bars with a new setup?
As a matter of fact, “new and improved” is the last thing customers want. We’re looking for “old and familiar, just the way it’s always been.” Why else would we stick with familiar food labels when they may be more expensive than the alternatives? Brand loyalty is all about keeping things the way we like them, which ultimately means the way they were when we were kids.
Take watermelon, for example. Watermelon has undergone a lamentable transition since I was a kid. Back in the day you could get bright red slices of sweet, juicy watermelon riddled with big, black seeds. You could easily retrieve those seeds from your mouth and spit them all the way across the yard. Or, if you didn’t want to run the risk of swallowing them and having a watermelon plant grow in your stomach, you could flick them out of the watermelon with a practiced fingernail. Fast forward to today, the era of “seedless” watermelon. I’d like to know just exactly what they’re talking about, since every slice of a “seedless” watermelon is full of tiny, annoying, unspittable little white seeds. They’re all still there. They’re just small and soft and good for nothing—and if those watermelon breeders think I’m going to eat them the way my mother thought I should eat salmon bones in canned salmon just because they’re soft, they’ve got another think coming!
While we’re on the subject of fruit, what’s up with those little stickers pasted onto each individual piece of fruit? Surely they’re not for human consumption. Here’s where things get tricky. It’s impossible to get them off. That’s not a big deal for an orange or a watermelon, but peaches and nectarines are another story. You try to peel the sticker off, and end up with a lovely, fuzzy peach with a fingernail-sized divot gouged out of it where the sticker used to be. Then there are other times when you succeed in prying the sticker off an apple without breaking the skin, only to find out that its main function was to cover up a bad spot. That’s a bad day.
Of course, there are some really fun aspects to grocery shopping as well. If you’re a little kid, you get to ride in the cart and look at the lobsters in the fish tank all climbing on top of one another, and listen to your mom tell you how lucky you are that you only have to share your room with one of your siblings. If you’re a grownup who’s allergic to lobster, you can scoot right past that fish tank and focus on checking items off your list, assuming that you didn’t leave the list at home on the kitchen counter. You can look forward to the next grocery store promotion that will have you saving little bits of paper on some kind of a game board to win some dishes or gift cards or maybe a million dollars. The more you shop, the more chances you have to win! I figure I’ve got a better chance thanmost people. I go grocery shopping at least four times a week, remember?
• Peggy McKee Barnhill is a wife, mother and debut author who writes cozy mysteries under the name “Greta McKennan.” Her first novel, Uniformly Dead, is now available at Hearthside Books. She likes to look at the bright side of life.
