Grocery Shopping

I detest the process of grocery shopping, but I do enjoy the benefits (aside from always feeling like I spent too much money and received too few goods). Why would I loathe grocery shopping, you ask? The heinous humans who also shop.

Grocery shopping showcases how rude (or unbelievably stupid) people are. There’s no denying it’s one or the other, and while I could cut some slack in the latter instance, I don’t believe anyone can be as stupid as these people, hence the phrase “unbelievably stupid.”

Has another shopper ever made eye contact with you in a grocery store? Probably not. I don’t mean to imply we need to make small talk, or even say anything, but a simple acknowledgment that says, without talking, “You’re another person and you exist” would do. Have some confidence, people. Hold your head up and acknowledge your humongous dinosaur cart with three kids crammed inside can’t fit down the same aisle as my regular cart.

Instead, you, despite being able to navigate a store with three kids and a gigantic dinosaur attached to your cart, somehow can’t see another person right in front of you. Are you intimidated because I’m actually looking in your direction, setting up a chance for mutual acknowledgment and some kind of traffic maneuver that will let us both shop? Are you really so interested in every item in the store you have to stare (from a distance of two inches) at every single cereal box when you already have all the cereal you need in your dinosaur cart?

Maybe your kids are older and no longer fit in a dinosaur cart. Obvious solution: let them roam free throughout the store, occasionally returning to your side to announce the latest exciting piece of food they can’t live without. So, while you’ve downsized from a dinosaur to a regular cart, you now have 2-3 little humans running around and squeaking with their not-so-cute voices.

And here I come again, down the same aisle. Think it would be prudent to tell your kids, who don’t know any better and can’t be blamed, to move over? Of course not, because you don’t see me, do you? How could you possibly see another human when you need to carefully eye every spice jar, even though I can tell by the contents of your cart and the size of your kids you never do any cooking that might involve a spice? Oddly enough, your kids can see me, and yet they still don’t know they’re supposed to move over. Not their fault. If only there were a role in life that involved an adult teaching manners to a child.

I apologize for judging you, but I wouldn’t have time to do so if you’d acknowledge me, human to human. We could pass by and I wouldn’t have six minutes to stare at your cart while your kids shuffle through mine.

Those of you without kids act as if your shopping is more important than mine, which, of course, it is, just as I believe mine is more important than yours. Your shopping, to you, is the most important thing going on in the store at that time. So, it makes perfect sense you should completely ignore me or even snootily dismiss me as if I don’t belong in the same aisle as you. How dare I purchase anything from anywhere outside the frozen-foods section?

I don’t want to talk to any of you. But it annoys me as a member of society to see so many people pretend no one else even exists. We can stand two feet away from each other and you will act as if you have terrible peripheral vision, never for a moment noticing another person directly to your left.

Acknowledge people. A brief, pleasant-faced session of eye contact will say, “Yes, you exist, and you are allowed in the pasta aisle, and we can both do our shopping without being rude, abhorrent jerks.”