Monday, January 08, 2007

Supermarket hell

Okay, it's an oxymoron. All supermarkets are hell.

It's not just the old people who seem to think they own the middle of each and every aisle. Or the ones who hold kaffee klatsches with their myriad little friends right in front of my brand of applesauce. It's not even the small screaming children that parents are so often forced to bring with them (I used to do this, so I don't really have any right to complain). No.

It's the tile floor.

I went to Wegman's today, as a change from my usual Giant run. I keep hearing such wonderful things about Wegman's, and I'm always so underwhelmed, that I feel like I have to keep visiting the store in different moods so I can see what magical secrets it holds. Is there a secret handshake that gets you into a special room filled with chocolate brownies? 'Cause that would do it for me.

Tell me why supermarket designers, knowing that 95% of their customers will push a wheeled cart on their floors, put tile down on them. Tile, with cracks between them. Cracks, which make the cart vibrate and rumble no matter how carefully you move over them. Multiply it by the dozen or so carts that happen to be in your vicinity, and it becomes a deafening roar.

Now, I'm one of those who find grocery-shopping so mind-numbing that I listen to my iPod throughout. You may find me anti-social, and that's fine with me: I am anti-social in the supermarket. I listen to podcasts, not music, which means my listening is a bit more active than it might otherwise be.

Now, Giant has a tile floor, but only in the produce department. I cruise through there as fast as I can and get the hell onto the smooth floor. They have the usual odious muzak playing, but I can pretty effectively tune it out by raising the volume on the iPod a bit, not enough to ruin my hearing, but enough to keep me in my comfortable bubble.

But Wegman's has a tile floor throughout the whole fucking place! Everywhere I go, the cart makes an awful noise, duplicated and resonated by all the carts around it, until I feel like I would welcome the godawful muzak at Giant. This, plus all the luscious food they display all over the place -- these people know their marketing! -- that makes me want to buy tons of things I don't need; I finally put back the one thing I had in my cart and left Wegman's behind. I drove to the nearby Giant, picked up the things I needed, avoided the things I didn't need (I committed the cardinal sin of going to the grocery store hungry and on the verge of a PMS chocolate craving), and got out of there in record time.

Where is it written that grocery shopping must be an "experience"? I want to get in, cross things off my list, and get the hell out. I don't want to sit and have a cup of coffee. I don't want to try this and try that. I don't want the senior citizens to be further encouraged to hang around, blocking the aisles, chatting about the cheese samples they just had at the deli. And I really don't want to push my cart over tiles, no matter how much they add to the decor.

Call me a supermarket curmudgeon. Bah, humbug!