My SO has been bugging me lately to cook more, since [BRAG] I’m a kick ass cook [/BRAG]. I have no problem with the actual cooking, but as I work full time, I have a hard time doing the meal planning & grocery shopping necessary to produce wonderful meals every night. “Fine”, says SO, “I’ll help.” So yesterday, I figured out meals for a week, and he went to the grocery store with a list that I had made.
He came back crabby as all hell. For a good half hour after shopping, he complained about it. He hates going to the grocery store, all the men there look like they’re aging, whipped losers whose wives force them to go, he can’t find anything, etc. etc. I mentioned this to a friend of mine at work, and she says her husband does the same thing - any trip to the grocery store, no matter how small, is an enormous effort and akin to getting teeth pulled.
So what’s up, guys? Do you hate grocery stores? I have to admit, it’s not my favorite thing in the world, but I don’t count it any worse than any other errandy type thing. At times, I even enjoy it. I have to admit I’m baffled by the outright hostility and hatred he shows towards it. Gimme the dope, all you grocery-store haters.
I didn’t used to hate the grocery store, but I never liked it. It just seemed like a waste of time.
I’m not one of those people to plan out a week’s meals and then do one big trip. I always made it up as I went so I usually went to the grocery store once a day, but only for ten minutes or so (and I lived within two blocks of major stores).
But now that I have experienced Webvan I am afraid I am coming to hate grocery stores more and more. Now that I am in Oakland this is only exaserbated by the fact that this city can boast the worlds slowest checkout lines.
Heck, I don’t mind them at all. I like to cook and I like to eat so I guess that helps. I might even go so far as to call it an escape from the daily grind (read: work)…sort of a reminder that there’s more to life than the office.
Dare I call it relaxing? Nope…you still gotta deal with slow lines and the idiots with 20 things in the 10 item or less express line.
I like shopping for groceries; that I like going up and down the aisles picking out food to eat. However, I ** * HATE HATE HATE HATE *** checkout lines. Little makes me more miserable than standing in some slow-ass checkout line behind some stupid lady arguing over a sale on cucumbers with the clerk. Then you get the clerk who spends half an hour trying to find acorn squash in her little price guide. Then there’s the lady trying to write a personal check for a 2 liter bottle of coke and a loaf of bread. Then theres the bagger who bags the groceries slower than they could bag themselves. If there even IS a bagger. Then there’s the fact that there are 18 people waiting in 4 aisles when there are 16 other aisles WITH NO CLERK. AIGH!!!
When guys shop, they are looking for efficiency. Without my wife, I can visit every aisle in the store and fill a cart in about 15 minutes (Jen takes about 15 minutes to pick out a brand of spagetti sauce). It’s the same with mall shopping: guys don’t fuck around: we want to go in, find what we came for, buy it, and leave. Yet when we go to the grocery store, we get stuck in a crowded aisle behind some 87 year old grandmother comparison shopping garbanzo beans and the mother with the two screaming kids stopped in the aisle changing a DIAPER, and all we want to do is get a CAN OF CORN… Then, once we have navigated past all of the other obliviously rude shoppers, we have to WAIT HALF AN HOUR to pay for our food. Men wouldn’t mind shopiing if it was more efficient. When I go at 11 PM on a thursday (great time to shop) I actually enjoy myself while going. It’s not the shopping that is the problem, it’s all of the other people getting in the way of us completing our mission that bug us men.
I don’t hate grocery stores specifically, but I do hate shopping in general. That is why I love Meijer’s so much. One store, one hour every 2 weeks, all shopping of every kind is done.
My wife and I always go together. I enjoy it. We have found multiple ways to turn it into a game. For instance
pick a shelf. Choose the most disgusting item on that shelf. Discuss.
pick a shelf. Pick your favorite. Why? You can actually learn things about someone this way. For instance, my wife now knows I went through a phase where I considered strawberries and bologna a delicacy. Granted, I was 3 years old.
See a product, sing the jingle.
Try it. It is more fun and less insane than it really sounds.
What bugs me the most is when people act as tho they have no idea someone else might want to come down the aisle as they check out which soup to buy, parking their cart and butt right in the middle of the aisle. Isn’t it just as easy to keep your cart on the side of the aisle? Common discourtesy tends to bug me, and if there is anywhere you can experience it more than in the grocery store, it is probably the grocery store parking lot.
Possible hijack - how many over the express checkout limit must someone go before you say anything? I’m not talking about counting a six pack as one item or six. And it may be understandable if the limit is 10, and someone has 12 or even 15 items and all the other lines are jammed. But is it ever appropriate to point out to someone that they clearly have two times as many items as the posted limit? If so, what do you say?
Shopping is worst when you are pressed for time. My solution is to go when I have nothing else pressing to do, have a couple of beers first, and take my time looking for yucks throughout the store. Can be quite a source of amusement if in the right mood.
I hate shopping of all kinds so much that the biggest part of any present my wife gives me is making it so that I don’t have to go into the store. As a kid I never would have thought how much I’d appreciate socks and boxers for Father’s Day.
xizor - Meijer’s is quite a trip. Don’t you think someone could go their entire life shopping nowhere else. “Fresh produce is in aisle 97, right next to guns and ammunition, and around the corner from fuzzy slippers, auto supplies, and bedding plants.”
Are you kidding? While shopping, I like to strike up conversations with women about the sensuality of whatever object they happen to be holding, a la Animal House.
I do all the grocery shopping in our family and I don’t really mind it that much. Sure, I would rather be doing something more exciting, but I enjoy it for what it is. But I’m with the other guys here–get in, grab the stuff on your list, and get out. Grocery shopping should be efficient, fast, and follow certain rules:
No chit-chat (Apu knows the deal)
No dickering over coupons. This ain’t the friggin’ open-air market of yore (“Ten for that? You must be mad”). You want to haggle, go buy a car.
Read the damn signs above the register. 10 items means 10 items. No exceptions. I am shopping on my way home from work. I am in a hurry. Do not make me kill you.
Follow these simple rules and we will all enjoy our trips to the store.
In defense: many times, when I go to the grocery store, the clerk working the express line runs out of customers. She then walks over to another line, where I am waiting patiently, and more or less invites me over to the express lane. I think that’s great; she wants to keep busy, I get out faster, everyone wins.
But often, when that happens, Single Joe gets in line behind me with his loaf of bread and sixpack of Coke and throws me a dirty look. Hey, I didn’t ASK to be in this line, it was thrust upon me. Don’t assume I’m the inconsiderate asshole, K?
Incidentally, I kinda like shopping; it’s cool to browse around and find new stuff to experiment with. The spice aisle is my playground.
Count me in with what Dinsdale and Jayron said. Unfortunately I do most of the shopping. Im from a large family my wife a small one so Im better at it. What really pisses me off the most is pisses me off the most is people who wnat to engage mw in conversation when Im in a hurry. That and those clueless jerks who think I work in the store. “Am I wearing a smock you blind SOB?”
Oh yeah then there’s the over-extended morons who complain that they’ve paid their bill.
The person who waits till the last minute to fill out the check
The incosiderate people who reached around you for the stick that separates groceries instead of asking for it.
The people who pick up vegetables smell em, squeeze em, than put em back
Oh yeah and the cashiers don’t hold guns to your head while they’re helping to rip you off.
Ooh I feel better
Oh reponse to hijack/ I usually say something like " I thought this line was…" LOUD, repeat as neccesary till the cashier wakes up.
obfusciatrist - Hey, Im in Oakland too! What part you from, I live by that girls college.
I do all the grocery shopping for my family. My dear wife HATES to do it because it takes her half an hour to get ready to go out. She buys a lot of unnecessary crap anyhow.
I think they need a men only/cash only line at the checkout, then you’d see real speed and efficiency in action!
I had a run-in with the resident Nasty Personality that lurks in my grocery store. I don’t know what his problem is, but I have some theories.
Hubbie and I and our two kids went grocery shopping Sunday evening. We used two carts. Both weren’t full, but plenty loaded and one kid per cart. Hubbie rolls up to the vast bank of checkout stands, where two clerks are working. Sitting in front of one line is an unattended cart, with about 6 items piled into the child seat.
Hubbie stands there for about 30 seconds, looking around for the owner. He never appears. He begins unloading. I further peer around, ready to wave the Poor Person through. He never shows. I start unloading.
Suddenly I hear a nasty “thanks a lot!” by an obviously irritated owner of the cart. Suprised, I shot back the fact that he, after all, wasn’t in line. Minutes later another lane open up. “Well, I guess the good are rewarded!!” he brays. Hubbie shoots back: “No just the assholes.”
My theory is that he’s Got Something Against Kids. He just had a few items, hates going to the grocery store anyway since it’s loaded with squalling brats (did he bother talking to my polite darlings? Nooooo…). And then an Offensive Family has the effortory to push HIS cart aside and GET IN HIS PLACE IN LINE.
Ahhh, the Grocery Store. A classic conundrum for me.
I don’t particularly like doing the shopping, but I do it anyway because Mr. Sunshine is NO HELP WHATSOEVER.
It goes one of three ways:
Way 1. I ask Mr. Sunshine to go and he moans/bitches until I go myself. Alternately, he goes but comes home empty handed for one of several reasons. i.e. I couldn’t find it…The line was too long…Aliens attacked, etc.
Way 2. I ask Mr. Sunshine to come with me and he does, but while there he (like a child) A) Grabs items he wants but we don’t need and puts them in the basket and whines/cries until I let him have the thing and B) Makes the whole trip take five times as long while he looks at/plays with stuff he hasn’t already grabbed and thrown in the basket.
Way 3. I go by myself, thereby saving mucho dinero, time and marriage.
Obviously, Way 3 is the most common outcome of my grocery store conundrum. It just kills me that if I take Mr. with me, we can go in with a 5 item, $20 or less list and come out with a cartful. Ugh.
