Last evening we met our old friends C. J. and Patty Putz at a restaurant for dinner.  It was great to spend a couple of hours with them catching up on old times. That full-bellied-after-dinner-warm-glow was just right.

And then my beloved wife Marsha shattered it when she announced that on the way home we needed to stop at The Store From Hell and buy some groceries.

I really shouldn’t call it The Store From Hell, because it is really very nice and we are lucky to have it.  The produce section is wonderful, and we can always find virtually anything we need in the endless landing strips they call aisles and the spacious gymnasiums they call their Meat Department and Canned Goods sections.

No, the less-than-flattering name I have given the store has much less to do with the store’s ownership and management than it does with my own dislike of shopping in such huge places.

In fact, only two things about the store itself bother me.  More about that later.

You see, I grew up in a very small town, where my mom would send me to Herb and Twila’s store with a shopping list.  I’d go in the back door and hand the list to Herb at the meat counter.  He’d look at it to see what cheeses and meats he needed to cut and wrap in white paper, and then hand it back to me.  I’d go to the front of the little store, walking on black and white tiles, and Twila would help me fill a basket or little cart with the other things on my mom’s list, stopping last at the meat counter where Herb would be ready with his packages.

Twila would add it all up on a slip of paper and I’d walk out.  My mom would pay the bill later.

Total time from leaving my house a block from the store to returning, on foot, was never more than 10 minutes unless I hung around and talked with Herb and Twila for awhile.

So pushing a gigantic cart up and down aisles packed with stuff I don’t even understand  (what in the world IS an “energy drink” anyway?) and trying to find where they keep the raisins and wondering why they can’t put computer monitors at the ends of the aisles so you can look up the locations of stuff is not my idea of a good time.

The two things that I dislike most really ARE the fault of the owners of the stores.

First is the parking:  Why in the world would you EVER put a roadway BETWEEN the parking lot and the store?  And, do the people who park closest to the store just go there at 5:00 a.m. and leave their cars there ALL DAY LONG so that nobody else can ever get closer than the back row? 

The second thing is checkout. 

Last night we chose what we thought was the shortest line.  Only one woman ahead of us.  A grandmother with a noisy and precocious grandson. And a cart with 500 items in it.  And, she had questions.  And issues.  And special payment problems.  And this, and that, and..and…and.  We were in line for 20 minutes.  Of the 30 or so check-out stations, perhaps ¼ were open. 

Herb and Twila, where were you in my hour of need? 

                            © by Jim Whitehouse

                                                    Index