London cab drivers, warehouse aesthetics, and herding humans like cattle

Another grocery story

A new warehouse grocery store opened in town last month, right next door to the old warehouse store where I shop twice a week. It has bulk food and big shelves, low prices and carts the size of small vehicles. It’s shiny and new, and people are either excited or ticked off about it, I’ve noticed.

I knew when construction began that there were pros and cons to having a new place to shop for groceries. The old store gets very crowded, making me uncharacteristically anxious, especially in the produce section. Anyone entering the store is automatically herded to the fruits and vegetables first. You don’t get to choose to go for dairy or bread or baking supplies first, unless you want to go against the flow of other shoppers. I don’t know what kind of planning strategy makes them think this is the right way to do things, but it stresses me out. Carts are bumper to bumper, and people get impatient right around the potatoes and onions. Having another store open will make both the parking lot and the store itself less crowded.

The new store won’t bring any new business to town, though. It has simply divided the old store’s clientele, siphoning off those who want cheap groceries from a shiny new store, instead of cheap groceries from the old, familiar one. This is what makes some people mad, people who feel a loyalty to the old store that has served us for decades. 

I hope the old store makes it, and I hope the new one does, too. 

Before we bought the deli, I shopped at a more expensive store because it was less crowded, less ugly, had everything on my list, and a Starbucks inside. I was content to spend a little more for the convenience of one stop shopping and the comfort of room to wander and breathe. But we buy so many groceries now, it wouldn’t be worth the extra expense to shop there. 

The warehouse store can feel like a feedlot for the hungry and harried, nothing pleasing to the eye or mind, but it has jumbo carts and good deals. I sacrifice aesthetics for bargains because I don’t actually need every experience to be beautiful—some things just need to get done.

Mind you, if a beautiful store with great bargains came to town, I’d be there in a heartbeat.

The Marketplace in Greifswald, by Caspar David Friedrich

Grocery Stories get me through

I tell myself grocery stories while I am herded through the aisles:

1. A man overflowing his pinstriped overalls pushes a cart around behind an elderly woman, presumably his mother. He grabs what she calls out from her list, puts it in the cart, and walks on dutifully. I think it’s his day off work and Mom asked for help with the shopping, so he picked her up and is following her around to load and unload her groceries. I think he’s doing a great job.

2. I wonder if someday one of my sons will follow me around with a shopping cart¹. More likely it will be one of my daughters, though, and I try to pay attention to the tension of mothers and daughters, shopping. There is a lot of it, I notice, and I make note not to be that mother. But I am already annoying, sometimes on purpose, and so I think my daughters are going to want to get us a shopping service or something. 

3. At the old warehouse store, I help three different customers find what they’re looking for: yeast, Chinese Five Spice, and ultra-pasteurized milk. I see people making the same loops down the same aisle, or staring into the same shelf for long periods of time, and I just want to help them move on because I know no one is enjoying this chore much, and talking to a stranger reminds me we are not cattle. Whatcha looking for? I ask, and I point the way or give directions. It makes me feel benevolent, like the Grocery Store Fairy Godmother.

4. I am standing near the tortillas and I hear a couple in the meat department having a little spat. I think, actually, they aren’t arguing so much as just talking very loudly about what they do and do not need. It sounds like an argument because it is loud and not very self-aware, but I tell myself the story that he’s just hard of hearing and she just wants him to be happy pushing the cart for her while she chooses what they need. Loud people are not always mean and rude, I tell myself.

5. There is one clerk who is not loud or rude or in any way unkind, but she makes so much small talk, on repeat, that I always avoid her line. I feel bad about this as I duck into the line next to hers, with a longer wait. I feel like she loves her job and loves making people feel seen and is maybe lonely and unseen, herself; but I avoid her. Most of the time I just cannot string together the cliches in response. Maybe next week I’ll be a better person. Next week I’ll seek her out and endure the small talk and work in some cliches of my own. Maybe. 

Second Nature

N. T. Wright opens his book Into the Heart of Romans with the story of his move to London in 2020.  He knew many landmarks of the city already, but figuring out how they all connected, how to get from one to the other, was a big task. He tells about the London taxi drivers who “...scorn GPS systems. They become living, breathing maps. They train by spending two years walking round everywhere, memorizing, taking notes, figuring out the one-way systems and short cuts, until it becomes second nature.” Scans show that the taxi-drivers’ brains literally change shape because of this process.

I value efficiency and convenience, and in my heart of hearts I really just want to hurry through shopping so I can go home again, because I love home. But I know the aisles of the old warehouse store and this is my version of learning the streets of London by heart. I know the clerks, the produce people, the baker, and I often run into the same shoppers week by week. 

In my head there is always a story going. I ignore the first explanation² that comes to my mind, and try on other scenarios: maybe this; possibly that. I try to be generous, and I hope the shape of my brain is changing. I hope I can learn to tell good stories by heart.

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1. I have painful memories of young kids pushing carts, and my heels still feel the indescribable sting. I don’t know that I could ever trust like that again. Also, I feel a sense of control and mission with a cart in my hands, and I get lost and wandery if someone else is pushing it. I’ll push the cart thanks. 

2. A bit of backstory and irony: this post, in its rough draft form, was pretty negative and cynical. I had to rewrite and reread it several times to get at the second story. Sometimes I have to tone it down from cynicism to just a little snark.