Grocery Store Rant

I see more and more women pulling away from the stereotype of being shoppers.  I have never been a shopper…ok; a man shopper…what I mean is that I shop like a man.  I go in, get what I came for and leave.  I have no desire to look at and feel everything in the store.  I get online and do my homework then find the store nearest me (if I can’t buy it online with little or no shipping charges), go in, buy it (if it hasn’t been delivered to the store in advance) and get out.  Very efficient, I might add. 

The grocery store has been my least favorite places to shop since I have been an adult.  I believe the entire process is for Neanderthals. 

We have all this technology at our fingertips and we are still bothered by those carts with square wheels on them…and everyone in the store is having a different issue with the cart.  The carts seem to have a mind of their own.

We all play dodge ball, bumper carts, or some other child’s game in the store with our cart.  The cart we think we can control.  Never mind the people that leave their carts in the middle of the aisle…women use to be able to tell when men were shopping as this was their trick but now women are doing it too.  You know who you are.  You get a cart to take with you, not to leave in the aisle.

We start at the approximate same spot in the store each time.  We take the freshly stacked packages from the shelves and put them in our cart and we go through the entire store.  We cart all those packages to the check-out aisle and wait while being entertained by the headlines of the magazines or for some, the entire magazine. 

We unload the packages we just loaded in the cart on the gross rubber belt to aid the less-than-friendly cashier with their o-so-glamorous-job.  The cashier gets to wear gloves to keep the fluids from getting on them, but unless you bring your own gloves, you get to endure the mess of liquids on your hands, body and on the rubber belt.

After all that another o-so-sweet person puts your packages in plastic bags without ever asking what type of bags you like.  You can’t choose paper because no one knows how to actually pack groceries anymore.  The pride of grocery packing is ancient history.  So should grocery shopping this way be!  

We cart those purchases to our vehicle to unload them in the trunk/backseat then find a cart gathering place in the parking lot to place the used cart. It seems that we make it easier for the people working in the store than they make it for the consumers.  Then we drive the purchases home and again have to remove the bags from the trunk/backseat, unload the food into our kitchen and put the food away in pantry or refrigerator and do it all over again the following week.

THERE has to be a better way for our technology savvy society to get food.  Why is gathering food lagging so far behind?

What Do I Know?

I have been thinking about the things I really do know and came up with this list:

I know the lasting pain of losing someone you thought you would be growing old with

I know the joy of growing things from seed, including children

I know the sheer joy of hearing a young child laugh and know it is the sweetest music to my ears

I know the pompous satisfaction of getting something of high quality for a bargain price

I know that living, loving and laughing are not easy for any of us...we have to choose to remember the little things that make life worth living, love worth sharing and laughing worth the effort

I know that most of us are more alike than different and we experience a majority of the same things in life

I know as a woman, when I put my mind to something, it gets done. I know there is nothing stronger than the will of a woman on a mission

I know the smell of a spring rain has an uplifting effect on my well being, the sound of crunching leaves under my feet helps bring out the little girl in me and I still wait with grand anticipation for the first snow