Man I suck at life. It's halfway into March and I've posted nothing.... argh.
Grocery shopping is a great cultural experience. It shows you a lot about a place, everything from clientele to employees to selection, it all has a Deeper Meaning. Take the employees for example. In the US, they are super overly friendly, and desperately want to help you find everything. I almost feel like the Safeway employees should go for a career change and switch to counseling, because I have never had so many people ask me "can I help you?" in my life. Or else I am due for therapy. Anyways, the American freakish helpfulness is counteracted by the famous German Indifference, which basically consists of pretending customers don't exist, making snide comments to those who are too slow in throwing their purchases into their cart to be bagged later, and a basic general commitment to being Serious About Everything And On Top Of That Having No Humor. I can't say too much about Spanish supermarkets because I was only in one about twice, but I did stand behind a lady who had to fill out her address and complete medical history and multi-volume memoires (in triplicate) in order to leave her cart for a few minutes. But I mentioned that before. The Swiss are nice and helpful if you need something, but not irritatingly friendly nor with some kind of strange superiority complex.
I'm a Migros, I have to admit. I always go to the same one, 'cause it's the only one which carries my brand of Müsli. Regardless of the fact that I only buy Müsli about every second or third week. Anyways, back when I had nothing to do I could go shopping whenever I wanted, which was mostly mid-morning. Now, the following is a shameless bout of mockery which, while evoking a small but prescient complaint from my conscience that I am Not A Good Person For Making Fun Of Other People--but I can't resist. It's a post about supermarkets and Migros. At my Migros, there's a lady who works there all the time. She has her hair, frizzled and dyed black, always in a ponytail on the very top of her head. Besides this heinous fashion misdeed, she also has no eyebrows whatsoever. Now I suppose it's your choice to pluck your eyebrows out and re-create them with a sharpie if you so desire, but if you do, make sure they actually have the proportions of eyebrows and not of ski goggles.
Aaaaaanyways, I was there today (everything is fricking closed on Sunday, which means everyone goes shopping on Saturday, which means everyone tries to fit a week's worth of groceries in our solitary fridge--shared among 8 people with mutually exclusive food--which is subsequently adorned with little notes as people discover, with dismay, someone else's 3 dozen eggs taking up their shelf). And I collected my usual round of suspects and picked a short-ish looking queue. Of course, I only notice the problem once I have unpacked my basket, and it's too late to leave. The woman in front of me bought about 100 CHF of groceries, but here she is, complaining that she was charged 10 centimes too much for four of the fifteen bars of chocolate she had purchased; apparently, she had mistakenly been lead to believe that there is some kind of rebate or customer loyalty points collection which she would not be acquiring as a result of the store's negligence in proper signage. Establishing that the thing was poorly signed involved three employees and two trips back to the chocolate aisle, whereupon the collective brainpower of the wronged party and her three assistants, after meticulously pressing all possible combinations of buttons on the register, established that no rebate was forthcoming, so the lady was therefore only going to take those bars of chocolate on sale, and re-select the remainder so as to fit the conditions of the special offer. Meanwhile, I have sprouted several gray hairs and can literally see my milk turning bad from being out too long on account of this lady. Immersed with the consideration of exactly what I would tell my profs to excuse my certain absence on Monday (still stuck in the line at Mirgros) I almost missed the lady paying with the promise of reimbursement and special assistance in re-selecting her chocolate choices.
//rant
PS: is it weird that I already had a tag for 'grocery shopping'?
Showing posts with label grocery shopping. Show all posts
Showing posts with label grocery shopping. Show all posts
Sunday, March 15, 2009
Sunday, July 08, 2007
What *is* that thing??
I went shopping yesterday. More precisely, I fought my way through the hordes of retiree tourists, Japanese, and old women to buy fruit and vegetables at the market, trying to keep the inevitable sausage-eaters from staining my white blouse (these people buy a sausage and then remain standing in the middle of the path, and then act surprised and drip katchup on you if you try to get through). Yes, it is twice as expensive as our local discounter, but if I have the choice between an unsprayed, fresh salad from someone's garden and some vacuum-packed thing from Aldi, I'll take the former. And it's cherry season, so you can buy a pound of cherries for about two dollars, which I did, along with a kilo of tomatoes and two apricots, packing my purchases into my backpack.
I ate the apricots (mmmmmm) and met a friend for lunch, and we looked for jeans for her, got ice cream, and went grocery shopping. In Germany, you pay for your plastic bag, which is doubly irritating as you probably have fifteen bags at home (for which you have paid) if you have to buy a new one. I, however, have a backpack, and I manage to just fit everything but the salad and the four pounds of apples I bought. One would be astounded how much is possible to transport by bicycle--I've seen everything from carpets to computers--and it is usual for me to ride home from the store with bags dangling from my handlebars.
As I am mostly home and am locking up my bike, I notice that my back is moist, the lower part where my jeans meet my blouse. Moist, moist....ok, something must have leaked. I bought a yoghurt, that could be it. That would really be a mess. I, hunched over to hopefully avoid dripping whatever it is everythere, stumble up the stairs to my apartment and unload my groceries.
The part where I had gone to the market and bought cherries is the part I had forgotten while packing my kilos of carrots and nectarines in my backpack, and my produce managed to press my formerly gorgeous little cherries, and it was cherry juice that was leaking. Scheiße.
I can handle this, I think, and take off my (formerly) white blouse to soak (it now has red streaks on the back), clean up the backpack, change my shirt.... and notice the huge purple blotch on my lower back, ending in a tidy line where my jeans were. It looks like I'd been beaten severely...by cherries!
I ate the apricots (mmmmmm) and met a friend for lunch, and we looked for jeans for her, got ice cream, and went grocery shopping. In Germany, you pay for your plastic bag, which is doubly irritating as you probably have fifteen bags at home (for which you have paid) if you have to buy a new one. I, however, have a backpack, and I manage to just fit everything but the salad and the four pounds of apples I bought. One would be astounded how much is possible to transport by bicycle--I've seen everything from carpets to computers--and it is usual for me to ride home from the store with bags dangling from my handlebars.
As I am mostly home and am locking up my bike, I notice that my back is moist, the lower part where my jeans meet my blouse. Moist, moist....ok, something must have leaked. I bought a yoghurt, that could be it. That would really be a mess. I, hunched over to hopefully avoid dripping whatever it is everythere, stumble up the stairs to my apartment and unload my groceries.
The part where I had gone to the market and bought cherries is the part I had forgotten while packing my kilos of carrots and nectarines in my backpack, and my produce managed to press my formerly gorgeous little cherries, and it was cherry juice that was leaking. Scheiße.
I can handle this, I think, and take off my (formerly) white blouse to soak (it now has red streaks on the back), clean up the backpack, change my shirt.... and notice the huge purple blotch on my lower back, ending in a tidy line where my jeans were. It looks like I'd been beaten severely...by cherries!
Tuesday, April 17, 2007
Special: Soul for sale
One of my favorite things to do while travelling is to go grocery shopping. I love seeing how the stores look, all the cool and different things there are to eat, things I’ve never seen before, or variations I’d never dreamed of, vegetables whose taste and preparation requires research, mysterious containers with unknown contents. I enjoy watching people shopping, seeing how their little routines differ from mine—people tend to buy the same things every time they go to the store. I watch the French bite into their bread after leaving the bakery; I marvel at the range of sweets on display or how many sauces or olives are on offer; I wonder just how that little cheese or that funny looking drink would taste.
Checking out is also a different experience; in the US, you place your food on the conveyor belt, it is scanned and bagged and replaced in your cart. In France and in Spain, your food is scanned, and the checker may bag your purchases or at least give you plastic bags for you to do it yourself, and you have time to read the magazines a bit before it’s your turn.
In Germany, it’s different: At Aldi, where the rumor is that employee wages are dependant on their ability to scan a certain number of items per minute, there is no time lost—your purchases are scanned quickly, and before you can barely toss them, completely unpacked and with no system or order whatsoever, into your cart, the cashier is already impatiently awaiting your payment or card, repeating a mechanical litany of instructions (will you be paying with bar or card? Please insert card, stripe lower right, enter your PIN and confirm twice). Before you can finish tossing the rest of your stuff into your cart the next customer is glaring impatiently and the checker has started on his or her purchases, such that there is real danger of your items falling on the floor before you can grab them. It can be harrowing for the uninitiated.
But you get used to it. You get used to the fact that people don’t screw around in the checkout line, there are no magazines to read and no time to read them, and it’s really not that big a deal to bag your own groceries at the special counter in the back with the bags you brought or bought yourself. When you travel, you become exasperated at the glacial pace with which the cashiers in other countries scan the items. In Spain, I waited in line with a baguette, a package of olives and one of yoghurt, behind a woman with a huge cartful of groceries which were, thankfully, about 90% scanned, bagged, and in the cart by the time I arrived. The cashier, for reasons known only to her and certainly not to me, began to print off three-foot receipts, fill each of them (three times!) out with the patron’s name, address, ID info, complete medical history and several other things. I, meanwhile, wait (relatively) patiently, eagerly awaiting the opportunity to devour my meagre lunch before returning to work. I think I must have sprouted several grey hairs during my wait. Even in France, faster than Spain and slower than Germany, the wait began to get to me and I tried not to look impatient as the grandmother in line before me counted out twenty five coins to pay for her purchase.
So I was missing my beloved unfriendly German checkers. I returned to Germany, and returned to Aldi, where the comforting repetitiousness of their monologue (will you be paying with bar or card? Please insert card, stripe lower right, enter your PIN and confirm twice) provided a balm to my impatience, until the following occurrence made me wonder if working as a checker, by virtue of the monotony of the job, turns you into a machine, removing all trace of humanity or common sense:
The checker was checking with all her might (will you be paying with bar or card? Please insert card, stripe lower right, enter your PIN and confirm twice). The person in front of me had maybe eight items; the checker checked the first five or so (will you be paying with bar or card? Please insert card, stripe lower right, enter your PIN and confirm twice) and forgot the last three; only the initial purchases were part of the transaction. “I’m sorry,” she says, “I didn’t see them. I’ll have to do another transaction.” The customer didn’t mind, so the checker scans the items and repeats again, as if the customer could not possibly remember what she had just been told thirty seconds before: “Will you be paying with bar or card? Please insert card, stripe lower right, enter your PIN and confirm twice.”
Checking out is also a different experience; in the US, you place your food on the conveyor belt, it is scanned and bagged and replaced in your cart. In France and in Spain, your food is scanned, and the checker may bag your purchases or at least give you plastic bags for you to do it yourself, and you have time to read the magazines a bit before it’s your turn.
In Germany, it’s different: At Aldi, where the rumor is that employee wages are dependant on their ability to scan a certain number of items per minute, there is no time lost—your purchases are scanned quickly, and before you can barely toss them, completely unpacked and with no system or order whatsoever, into your cart, the cashier is already impatiently awaiting your payment or card, repeating a mechanical litany of instructions (will you be paying with bar or card? Please insert card, stripe lower right, enter your PIN and confirm twice). Before you can finish tossing the rest of your stuff into your cart the next customer is glaring impatiently and the checker has started on his or her purchases, such that there is real danger of your items falling on the floor before you can grab them. It can be harrowing for the uninitiated.
But you get used to it. You get used to the fact that people don’t screw around in the checkout line, there are no magazines to read and no time to read them, and it’s really not that big a deal to bag your own groceries at the special counter in the back with the bags you brought or bought yourself. When you travel, you become exasperated at the glacial pace with which the cashiers in other countries scan the items. In Spain, I waited in line with a baguette, a package of olives and one of yoghurt, behind a woman with a huge cartful of groceries which were, thankfully, about 90% scanned, bagged, and in the cart by the time I arrived. The cashier, for reasons known only to her and certainly not to me, began to print off three-foot receipts, fill each of them (three times!) out with the patron’s name, address, ID info, complete medical history and several other things. I, meanwhile, wait (relatively) patiently, eagerly awaiting the opportunity to devour my meagre lunch before returning to work. I think I must have sprouted several grey hairs during my wait. Even in France, faster than Spain and slower than Germany, the wait began to get to me and I tried not to look impatient as the grandmother in line before me counted out twenty five coins to pay for her purchase.
So I was missing my beloved unfriendly German checkers. I returned to Germany, and returned to Aldi, where the comforting repetitiousness of their monologue (will you be paying with bar or card? Please insert card, stripe lower right, enter your PIN and confirm twice) provided a balm to my impatience, until the following occurrence made me wonder if working as a checker, by virtue of the monotony of the job, turns you into a machine, removing all trace of humanity or common sense:
The checker was checking with all her might (will you be paying with bar or card? Please insert card, stripe lower right, enter your PIN and confirm twice). The person in front of me had maybe eight items; the checker checked the first five or so (will you be paying with bar or card? Please insert card, stripe lower right, enter your PIN and confirm twice) and forgot the last three; only the initial purchases were part of the transaction. “I’m sorry,” she says, “I didn’t see them. I’ll have to do another transaction.” The customer didn’t mind, so the checker scans the items and repeats again, as if the customer could not possibly remember what she had just been told thirty seconds before: “Will you be paying with bar or card? Please insert card, stripe lower right, enter your PIN and confirm twice.”
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