The Supermarket
I was sent out on a mission to buy a few specific items at the supermarket: bread, cereal, milk, eggs, crackers, Oreos, and a can of black olives.
I pride myself on having supermarket shopping down to a science, being able to get through the aisles of any given grocery store tossing everything I need into my carriage, moving quickly through the line, and getting back out to my vehicle in what is usually record time.
Before driving away I always check the receipt, a habit that was drilled into my head by an old girlfriend who was convinced that supermarkets are secretly attempting to increase profits by intentionally making errors at the register at the expense of oblivious customers. Attempting to read a supermarket receipt is like an archeologist trying to decipher the lost language of an ancient civilization. The name of each food item is cleverly abbreviated making everything you buy a mystery by the time you leave the store. While supermarkets are able to spell out a product like fresh bananas on their receipts, you are left to your own devices with such things as BE SF SWT RCE or TB VG TKK MSLA I. The time and energy it normally requires to identify most of the items on your receipt is usually not worth the .22 cents that you were attempting to save on that jar of peanut butter.
Some supermarkets are now demanding that customers pay for brown bags, a practice that always makes me tempted to tell them that I will pass on the bags and, instead, try to carry all of my groceries out by the armful. There is also an expectation that customers should now be ringing up their own groceries using self checkout. I make it a point to avoid self checkout, adhering to the belief that if a supermarket wants to me to serve as the cashier then they should also let me use a pricing gun while I shop.
And, of course, there are the actual groceries. A trip to the supermarket that once meant picking up routine items like bread, milk, eggs, cereal, crackers, cookies, and in my case something that is usually impossible to find like a tiny can of black olives is now riddled with choices that could leave even the most decisive shopper in a state of total confusion.
Upon entering a grocery store, a customer must first choose between a cart, a half-cart, or to carry a basket. It is widely believed that using the full-size cart automatically means you will buy more groceries. Therefore, using a basket to simplify is a great idea unless milk is on your list which means you will be carrying an item that weighs the equivalent of a barbell while you shop.
The bread shelves now contain enough unexpected choices to make anyone's head spin including whole wheat, honey wheat, soft multigrain, oatmeal, buttermilk, potato, stone ground, and pita bread, along with the standard choices of rye and raisin. In an effort to remain somewhat healthy, I tried to choose between 12 grain bread and 17 grain bread (both containing what I consider to be too many grains and not enough bread) and couldn’t help but wonder about the shopper who only wants a 4 grain bread. Eventually, I settled for something called Rustic White having always been a fan of baked goods from the 1830s.
Cereal is easy. My goal was to toss a box of Cheerios into my cart and proceed to the next item on my list. But Cheerios now come in many different types such as whole grain oats, chocolate peanut butter, very berry, apple cinnamon, Cheerios with protein, and Ancient Grain Cheerios for anyone who has ever wondered what it might have been like to have a bowl of cereal in Mesopotamia.
When I was a kid there were only two kinds of milk, regular milk and something called NuForm for people who were diet conscious during the 1970s. Buying milk now requires you to differentiate between 1%, 2%, fat free, and whole milk which is yet another reason why I wish I had listened to my fourth grade math teacher. Today’s milk can also be purchased as soy-based, coconut, almond, banana, Omega 3, and grass fed - which is probably not the choice of milk drinkers who prefer their orange juice pulp free.
Eggs can be free range or cage free (not really sure of the difference), brown, white, medium, large, and extra-large. There is no option to buy small eggs. Organic eggs are always available. A chicken farmer once told me that the term organic is somewhat misleading simply meaning the chickens that produce organic eggs “eat bugs and worms off the ground instead of eating chicken feed.” Enough said.
I never bit into an Oreo as a kid and thought that it could be improved. Yet Nabisco has apparently branched out from this classic cookie now offering it in a staggering amount of styles and flavors including Thin Bite Oreos, Golden Oreos, Double Stuff Golden Oreos, Cinnamon Bun Oreos, Red Velvet Oreos (apparently stuffed with fabric), Peanut Butter Oreos, and Cinnamon Cookie Oreos which begs the obvious question: Why wouldn’t you just eat a cinnamon cookie?
I expected to complete this visit to the supermarket by tossing a box of Triscuits into my cart, but this once simple cracker now has so many variations that it could practically be given its own aisle. Triscuits now come in a mind-boggling amount of available flavors ranging from smoked gouda, hint of salt, sweet potato and roasted onion, cracked pepper and olive oil, fig and honey, balsamic vinegar and basil, roasted garlic, lemongrass and ginger, as well as reduced fat and, finally, Triscuits – the original cracker. A worker stocking the shelves was somewhat amused in recognizing my state of bewilderment. “It’s overkill for sure,” she said laughing. “And there are even more Triscuits over there in the natural section.”
When I was a kid my favorite cracker was Chicken in a Biskit, probably because I liked the cartoon picture of the chicken on the box. Admittedly, it remains a favorite of mine but it’s not because of the taste. It’s because, as far as I know, there is only one kind of Chicken in a Biskit.
In some cases, it is more preferable to have limited choices in life, and if supermarkets operated with this simple philosophy I would probably be able to find the black olives.
