Kedar's Log, Stardate 2012

When I stepped out of my bachelorhood, I certainly knew there was something called Grocery shopping.. ‘coz you need milk, you need vegetables, you need soap, toilet tissues.. the list goes on. But before marriage, I was sort of noncommittal towards it. My mom would ask me to get something and I would get it. Marriage on the other hand, brought this commitment much closer to my heart and wallet! Just when I think I can laze around on a rainy Sunday – lying on the sofa,  sipping tea, eating junk food, and such..  my wife tells me to go get some Milk. Now why does milk have this uncanny ability to get over suddenly?! In my childhood, a milkman used to deliver milk at our door. How convenient, isn’t it? But even he used to miss a day or two, and I used to have to get up right in the middle of my early morning sleep to get milk from the store.

Anyways, I remember in my childhood, we did not have supermarkets. There were small grocery shops. One would go there with a list of things written on a piece of paper, and the shopkeeper would go in and get those things for you. You paid him the money and got out of there. At the most, you would buy a candy in addition to that because it was kept at the counter.

Come supermarkets and you started seeing everything stacked up in front of you and you actually started walking through the store. This is a big setup! You started thinking you needed to buy each and everything in the store, even if you just went in there to buy a toothbrush! So as you are going through the aisles, you are thinking – “yeah, I think I do want my commode to smell like a melon, so let me get that liquid that makes it smell like that!”. You go through the freezer section, the bread section, snacks, cookies, coffee, fresh produce, toiletries.. different types of tissues.. you know, toilet tissues, car tissues, scented tissues, bathroom tissues, kids tissues.. one ply, two ply tissues.. with pictures of a bear and his rear! You are standing there and thinking – just what kind of tissue should be entrusted to do the job for me!? You just can’t make up your mind..

Choices.. and too many of them.. they make your life hell!

Supermarkets are truly amazing though.. before they came on the scene, I didn’t know Milk had so much variety! Fat free, 1%, 2%, 3%, vitamin D, organic, soya, half and half.. I never got this name by the way – what is half and half? Half of what? And then you add half of something else and it becomes 1 of some new thing? Anyways, all this variety is out there to confuse you, to trick you into buying something that you don’t really want. Just see the checkout counter.. it has things like lip balms, chocolates, face tissues, batteries, all the way to cameras! It’s as if you come to the checkout counter and go – “oh, I almost forgot, I did want to buy a camera to take pictures of my grocery today!”.. I mean, what is the thought process behind having things like that there..? I once saw a torchlight with nail clippers hanging by the side! Sure, while you are trying to find your way through the dark, why don’t you cut your nails too?!

So you are at the checkout counter, and you purposely did not get more than 10 items, so that you can qualify for that “10 items or less” fast counter.. You might have 5 veggies, bringing the total to 14, but you count them as 1 since it is all vegetables anyway! This is still, in my opinion, an acceptable level of cheating.. But invariably there will be someone who is trying to sneak in with 30 items in this lane.. Now is it so horribly difficult to see that you clearly have way more than 10 items in your cart? This person will completely ignore your angry glances at his/her cart, and manage to say something like “oh, I didn’t realize this was 10 items or less” to the checkout lady and move on!

While you are waiting there patiently, there are these middle-to-old age ladies who refuse to like the technological advances of the 20th and 21st centuries! They will either pull out a stack of coupons, a checkbook or a wad of $1 bills from their oversized purses when paying for their grocery! I always wonder if  these people are just trying to make a statement? Something like – “I am old and I have loads of money.. and I don’t need no stinkin’ card to buy things!?”..You know what? – we get it, alright?!

Finally you face the person at the counter and throw the usual “How are you?” at him/her. Now this, “How are you” must be one of the most abused questions of modern times! There isn’t another question quite like this one, that gets asked without a real desire for an answer! But it’s okay.. I guess it was born out of a desire to greet someone with more than just a single word like “Hi”..

“Did you find everything okay”? – that’s another one of such questions. Have you ever answered that question with a “No”?! You can’t, because “No” is not a valid option for this question! It’s just like you go to a restaurant, they bring your food and then ask you after some time – “How is everything today?” – you say “It’s great” even if you didn’t like the food!!! So you can’t say “No” to questions like these – have you tried saying - No, I think you guys are cheating, you keep the milk cans that are expiring tomorrow in the front so that people will pick them up instead of the ones that are expiring a week later! Or No, I wanted to ride in those battery powered wheelchairs for the disabled, but your store assistant did not let me!.. Ever tried that? Have you seen those battery powered wheelchairs? Ever wanted to ride in those? I have, not as a handicapped person.. but as a normal healthy person whose feet hurt while his wife is looking at each and every item in the store!!

An alternative way is to go for the new Self checkouts.. They are a great invention, don’t get me wrong.. But you know, I have real privacy issues with those! So the machine keeps announcing what I have purchased – “Weigh your bananas, weigh your red delicious apples, or Enter your donuts..”. Now why is that? Whatever happened to plain old fashioned privacy?! And then you keep something on the side and the machine keeps telling you to “place the item in the bag”, so you keep it in the bag, and then it says “take it out of the bag..”, so you take it out again.. and finally it says “wait for the attendant!”. Now you are trying hard to appear tech-savvy, but now everyone behind you, thinks you are an idiot who can’t even operate this simple machine!

Somehow you pay your way out of all this madness and come out with at least 5 bags of stuff when you should’ve just been carrying a toothbrush! But you just came out of a supermarket! You can’t help it! The whole thing is designed to make a fool out of you! So you gladly oblige and pay for it too…!