Cart Wars ep IX The rise of stupid-walker

Here’s a question for the ages; If everyone shops for groceries, why am I the only one to notice how stupid it is? I don’t mean that shopping for food in itself is silly. Going to the market is a necessary part of life, like kicking the furniture in a dark bedroom. Doing this kind of stuff is required for a fulfilling life.

Yes, I understand the fact, you could live a long full life without busting your toes on various chair legs. But without it, how would we ever know the glory, and sheer joy, of getting to the bathroom and back with all ten digits intact? The pain is God’s way of showing us how much better our lives could be.

Of course, if you kick that dresser repeatedly every night, you might want to check in with the Almighty, just to see if there’s anything you’re missing. I mean, His messages can be a bit vague sometimes. He might be trying to steer your life in a different direction. Perhaps to get you to make better choices, or just give the furniture a wider circle. You just don’t know.

My Point

It’s the same with grocery shopping. Except for the fact that it’s completely different. You need to eat, and you can’t go out to that local place and eat kale stuffed oyster shells every night. There are many reasons for this. But the biggest one is the fact they don’t serve kale stuffed oyster shells. Frankly, nobody does. Yes, it’s crunchy, but it tastes terrible. If you want it, you have to make it yourself. Hence the need to go to the market. My logic astounds me sometimes.

I know what I’m talking about. Several years ago, I had a job traveling the country. I had to eat out every night and it was terrible. It was fun at the start, but after a while even expensive food gets boring. Sometimes, you just want one of your mother’s olive-loaf on day-old-bread sandwiches.

You can’t get one of these at any restaurant in the world. I’ve tried. Either the bread is just too fresh, or they don’t know what olive-loaf is. Sure, you can gorge on steak and lobster, when living on an expense account. But you can’t get trout, burnt to a crisp over a charcoal fire, with that extra spicy something you get from the lighter fluid. I’m not sure why anyone might order this, but my dad must’ve loved it. He served it all the time, during the summer, when I was growing up. But I’ve strayed a bit far from the topic.

Yes, everyone must go shopping and I just don’t understand how they do it. Getting to the store isn’t so bad. Sadly, when you get there, the stupidity begins. It starts with the store’s layout. I’ve been to many markets around the country, and they’re all the same. You walk into the place and see four miles worth of fresh produce. This is just plain nuts. Actually, it’s fruit and vegetables, the nuts are further along, but yet again, I digress.

Let’s hit the stores

Why is this an issue? Think about it. You walk into the place with an empty cart and high hopes. You see lovely, unbruised fruit, and decide to purchase some nice plump peaches. You gingerly put them in a flimsy produce bag, carefully place the bag in your cart, then walk through the store and toss heavy cans on top of it. By the time you check-out all you’ve got is fuzzy peach syrup with seeds. The store charges you extra for this, because it’s been processed.

Fresh stuff should be placed on top of cans and boxes, not underneath. But you can’t, because the store requires you to pick up these things first. The bakery is usually right there as well. I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve purchased a pound of cookie bits. It’s like the cart is a magical multiplying machine. You put in six cookies, and viola you suddenly get six-thousand crumbs.

Bread is another story. It starts out as nice rounded loves, and ends up looking like something an archeologist might dig up. My advice is to take a picture of it before it goes in the cart. That way you almost have a chance of getting it back to its original shape. Then again, you might like your sandwiches on oddly shaped, flattened bread. Who am I to judge?

Cakes, at least have a fifty-fifty chance of making it. They have plastic covers. But the odds go up drastically if you happen to be buying a gallon of milk from in the back of the store, past all the fragile stuff. Add a can of tomato juice and no bookie in the world will give odds on that cake surviving. I admit, licking the frosting off the plastic top can be fun… If you’re five years old!

On the plus side

Meat, which you see after the baked goods, is a different story. Yes, it’s still with the sensitive stuff, but while sitting in the bottom of the cart, a nice steak can become very well beaten. Place your apples and limes next to it, and it’s marinated and tenderized before you get home. These are recipe hacks even great chefs, like Gordon Ramsey, will never tell you about.

Now, you can rearrange your cart every twenty feet or so to keep the sensitive stuff from getting crushed. But it only takes one mistake, and you’ve got the impression of a can in your pumpernickel. Also, if you’re doing this successfully, that bread will likely end up on top of a frozen pizza. The moisture in between will freeze the two together, and when you arrive at the check-lane the bag will tear open. You’ll end up with slices all over the place. Clean up on aisle 4, could be avoided if only the store was better planned.

Once you get to the main section, the layout’s no better. First, you get an aisle of chip bags, next a bunch of salad dressing bottles, then cereal boxes. Look I learned how to stack things in kindergarten, and I’m still pretty good at it. But you can’t get this mix to fit together no matter how creative you are.

Size matters

The boxes are the only items with square corners, and even those are all different sizes. Even if you make the decision to frequently reorganize the cart, the boxes become a jigsaw puzzle on the bottom. Thing is, it will never fit because the cart bottom is a trapezoid with no right angles. It’s a lose-lose situation.

Assuming you get all your groceries in the cart without destroying a week’s worth of meals, you come to the last aisle. This contains cleaning and laundry products. These are the single heaviest items in the store. The problem is you can’t put them on the bottom of the cart without literally removing every other item which you have so deliberately placed.

It seems to me like the store was brilliantly designed with the shopping cart in mind. Then some idiot put the entry door on the wrong side.

It’s All Backwards!!