The major shop at a supermarket is a bit like life at a micro-scale. It’s confusing, disorienting, hectic and stressful, and full of people either shouting at you or pushing a large, heavy metal object at you at high speed with every intention to maim. So don’t even think about taking that last tin of chopped vegetables (fig 1). Also, you have no idea where the hell anything is.
Sometimes, to steel themselves for the forty minutes of torture they know awaits them, some people make a shopping list. From this, one of two scenarios can occur
1) You get to the supermarket, and have your trolley. You look at the list, and then swear to meticulously follow it from top to bottom, even if item number 1 is at one end of the shop, and item number 2 is at the other. Every item on the list must be found, and found in the order in which it is written down. The result: a two hour long shop which culminates in you having a nervous breakdown when you can’t find the coleslaw.
2) The list is just a rough guide. You’re going to do this as quickly as possible, so you can escape this shiny, plasticy hell-hole. This means you just go up every aisle you see once a single time, from one end of store to t’other picking up every item you see that rings a bell. The result: Twenty minutes of shopping, three hours of agony when you realise when you’re halfway home that as well as forgetting the tooth-paste, toilet roll and caster sugar, you’ve also left one spouse and a number of children in the supermarket café.
There is, thankfully, a happy medium. It involves using your noggin and coming up with a loose but definitive plan which covers everything you need, which usually means waiting at the checkout and taking it in turns with your significant other to dash off and pick up something that you’ve just remembered, then bask in the glow of the points earned on your store-card. SAVINGS, SOON YOU WILL BE MINE!
In my experience (humble thought it may be) the most stressful part of the shop is usually the buying of cheese over the counter. In some supermarkets, you are issued with some sort of ticket with a number, and you are expected to wait until a voice booms your particular digits over the speaker. It is rather like waiting to be shot. This is because -for me, at least- the sitting down and waiting instils a sense of panic, which slowly matures like the fine cheeses in front of you. You get nervous. Will they like my cheese choice? Will they think badly of me? Are they going to get all snobbish when they see the Dairylea and Cheese Strings in my trolley? Then, when you are beckoned like a lamb to the creamy and mature yet tangy slaughter, the person in his cheese uniform waits, holding some very sharp wire in a threatening manner. Of course, the best, calmest solution to dealing with the problem of cheese-buying-anxiety is a simple and obvious one. Simply smash through the counter, pick up the largest wheel of cheese you can, throw it through the wall and run to safety. (fig 2)
The most important thing to remember when one is going shopping is not to panic. Hyper-ventilating has no place in today’s busy, consumer driven lifestyles. If you want to hyper-ventilate, do it in the safety and manure-scented comfort of a farmers’ market. The supermarket is a place for bold derring-do, where every bargain must be sought out and acted upon. Be brave, be dashing, and be thrifty. Good luck.
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