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- Sooner or later they will have foil tags, like the security things on CD, that have the UPC of thet product encoded; it is even possible to print it on the package using special ink/paint. And your creditcheck card will have one on it too, that encodes your credit card number. So then, there won’t be any checkout, just a “checkout lane” and you’ll carry/cart your stuff through, and it will all be automatically added up, instantly, and put on your bank account just like that. You won’t even have to take your credit card out. A current, somewhat cruder version of this already in use is the Mobil Speedpass tags. ~ Impulse shoppers, be afraid. Be very afraid.
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- And I work/stock at a grocery store right now. Which means I’m poor and people make fun of me, but I know where everything is. I can walk directly to anything, or while scanning a list, walk down the aisles in order while picking up the items along the way, and not miss anything. Ta-Daaa!!! Who’s bad? - MC
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Of course, what he DOESN’T tell you here is that it’s only cause his Depends hold out till 2:15. 
Nothing too unusual on the list. About the only thing I can think of that was potentially hard to find was wheat germ. Other than that, think staples. Lettuce, bell peppers, bread, meat, canned tomatoes, etc.
He admitted to me last night that he thinks he just had a bad day the other day, and that grocery shopping really wasn’t all that bad. But an hour later he was back to condemning it as hell on earth. Who knows? I think my twisted personality is such that I get bored with people who don’t have constant violent mood swings. He fits the bill quite nicely.
My SO and I maintain two households and we both do the main shopping for our particular homes… but we also both go out together whenever we’re at one or the other places together for more than two days (you have to go out sooner or later) and kind of meander through Meijer and load up on resuscitative goodies… he doesn’t seem to mind grocery shopping at all but both of us prefer being there at odd times so we avoid the people who come with their entire set of family and friends… the only other thing I dislike about shopping is running into people that I associate with work… I teach in a small community and that means if I run to the store in sweats, no makeup and my hair in a pony tail, I am almost guaranteed to run into the bitch whose daughter/son I wrote up last semester… or a Board member… or that really snotty teacher from the Administration office who never has a hair out of place…
I belong to the Park Slope Food Co-Op in Brooklyn, the largest food cooperative in the US, and the only one that still requires all active members to do a monthly work-shift.
I LIKE shopping there, whether I do it myself or my wife accompanies me. Since everyone works, all the other shoppers know the stock, so when you ask “Do we carry sesame rice cakes?” or “Where are we keeping the sour cream these days? The yoghurt case, or general dairy?” (note use of pronoun) you actually get correct answers.
The downside is the checkout line; since the workers only do the job once a month they’re slower than people who do it for a living, and the line tends to get slow. {shrug} So I bring a book.
How come no guys have yet mentioned that wonderful aspect of grocery stores - free samples. Hit the Jewel or Dominicks at the right time on a Saturday morning, and you might not need to make lunch when you get home (course it might be dinnertime before you escape the throng.) No trip is complete until you’ve been cut off by at least one of the pleasant old ladies for overindulging. See how many splashes of wine/beer/liqueur they will let you down before suggesting you move on. And if you just ask at the bakery and deli samples, you might be surprised at what they will give you as samples. For some reason my wife considers such behavior unseemly!?
I was recently introduced to Fresh Fields, a more gourmet/organic type chain. They have
TONS of YUMMY samples. Chocolate chip cookies, multiple bread/chips and dips, meats and cheeses… Excuse me, but I’m pulling up a stool! Gotta do what I can to offset those higher prices.
God damn do I love the self check out. I’ve got a Super Fresh right near my office and they have 4 of the you-scan-it lanes. Woo-hoo!
One beef though.
Don’t use the self check out if you are an idiot!
Few things burn my ass like standing behind some dried up old hag trying to scan her creamed corn. Aaargh! Even worse is watching some troglodyte try to work the credit card machine. It’s not that freaking hard if you read the damn instructions!
Also, if you have 8000 items, use the regular check out lines. I hate having to wait behind some cretin as they try to bag their crap.
As to the OP, I am a guy and do most of the shopping for my GF and myself. I don’t mind grocery shopping, I always have a list and I don’t dick around, I’m usually out in under 30 minutes. When my GF comes with me it’s a damn nightmare, as she stops at each and every section to search through her wallet-o-coupons before she picks an item. Takes an hour or more to get the same stuff.
Helpful tip, if you’re gonna use coupons, sort’em at home. Only take coupons for what’s on your list and fer crying out loud, have’em organized.
gEEk
I don’t mind grocery shopping myself. Had to do it on a semi-weekly basis when I was single, so I’d sit down, make a quick list of food that would get me through until next payday, hit the Safeway (discount card in hand!) and pack it all into my nifty hefty Russian backpack at the register. Never used bags.
Now? Mrs. O does have coupons but she only takes what she uses. She sends me off to find what we need (and since we use Priceline it’s very specific) while she goes off to find other stuff. Not really much time spent comparison shopping - she knows what she likes and I frankly don’t give a rat’s ass. She cooks great, as do I, so we just pick up the basics.
The one thing I must apologize for is the Tzeroling. Folks, she won’t give up on insisting she push the cart (thereby causing potential hazards of all sorts, and a threat to displays everywhere) and if she can’t she’ll go off on her own and pull crap off the shelves, then run around like a banshee 'cos she’s bored out of her skull. I’m really, really sorry. I want to control her. But I didn’t make her so I can’t smack her.
When I used to go shopping at midnight, it seemed like it was always me and the same three guys in line. We all had excactly the same thing; a package of hotdogs and a package of hotdog buns.
Ellen, I am in the Miami-Dade area. I was living just outside of Covington, KY when I shopped Meijers over in Ohio. Since I was so close to Ohio, I refer to that as being my Nawthn experience. I loved Kentucky, for what that’s worth.
Aw, Louis. It’s a wonderful state. I wouldn’t leave it for the world! 
Preach on, brother! You hit my feelings right on the head. I don’t mind going, but I really am not partial to people who hold it up while chatting in the aisles, or picking individual grapes off of bunches, or making the deli man adjust the slicer 5 times to get the thickness just right.
I even find myself going so far as to organize my shopping lists in the order that I go through the store, mostly so that I don’t dawdle & get suckered into impulse buy things like ice cream, cookies, chips, etc…
Get in, get out, get home. That’s my mantra when in the grocery store.
dont have time to read the whole thing but would like to weigh in.
I don’t mind G.S., hate long lines and hate it even longer if I see a short one but my wife won’t get on it because she has to get some peanutbutter. I say we got everything else, screw the PB we’ll get it next time, we have a way out, I can see the light.
also I hate shopping by a list, I want to just stroll around and get what I need, maybe just get things for 1 planned out meal.
Being on the atkins diet for years have made it easier too, I just go around the outside, make a detor around the freazer section and get out, don’t have to go down all the asiles
Grr. And you know what I hate? Impatient men buzzing around me, huffing loudly and rushing me through the store. I’ve gotta cook this food, buster, and I’m gonna come home with what I want and not what I GRABBED because some pissy man got his panties in a wad because he couldn’t plough through the aisles at the speed of light, disloging innocent children from their perches, and acting generally like He Owned the Store. :mad:
The coolest male shoppers are firemen. They go in groups, wearing their uniforms (sometimes with those heavy protective pants) and examine produce together. I could watch them all day–they’re really cute. But then, I’ve always a thing for firefighters. My husband finds it amusing.
My husband and I shop together. He also shops alone–since we didn’t get married until he was 41, he had to shop for himself for years anyway. He’s way more anal than I am and watches the register like a hawk, ready to pounce when something rings up wrong (no–that’s $1.09, not $1.15!)
He’s also the family baker, so I don’t get in his way when he’s debating Hershey’s vs. Nestle’s morsels.
You mean you put a wrong name on the “Pay to the Order of” line? Did they accept it?
There are those of us males who don’t mind, even enjoy, grocery shopping, who don’t feel compelled to race through the store at lightning speed, and who’re capable of considering the concept of likely menus for the coming days in making selections. My wife professes to hate grocery shopping; she held this opinion even before we had kids, which admittedly makes it more of a challenge. More often than not, we shop together, mainly because it affords her an opportunity to get out of the house without being solely responsible for dealing with the kids, but she still loses her patience with the whole process much sooner than I do.
A major factor in this is that I genuinely enjoy cooking, while for her it’s just a chore to be done. Thus, I tend to enjoy browsing the shelves to see what’s available, trying new things and new twists on old ones, while for her it’s all just raw material for more unpleasantness. She’s the one with the “just get it and get out” attitude in the family, with one exception noted below. Unfortunately, my work hours and commute mean that if I cooked dinner, we wouldn’t be eating until 8 or 8:30 most nights, so she does most of the cooking (or convinces me to go out), and consequently has the final say on most purchases.
If the shopping were up to me exclusively, I’d base a lot more of our menu planning and purchase selections on which meats and produce looked particularly good or interesting. As it is, by the time we make it to the meat and produce sections (the last areas one reaches in the layout of our usual store), she’s had it and the kids have usually reached their limits as well, so we hurriedly grab more of whatever we bought last time.
The one thing she does get a kick out of from grocery shopping is using coupons, particularly those for 50 cents or less, which are doubled at Kroger, our usual store. Unfortunately, for me and the kids this often means pausing in the aisle in front of an intended purchase while she fishes through her coupon wallet for one covering a particular brand of the intended item. Meanwhile, the kids are getting squirmy and impatient with sitting still. All too often, this scene ends with me pointing out that even with the coupon, the brand in question is still more expensive than an equally acceptable store brand or alternate brand, or that we’d have to buy several units of an item we rarely use in order to “save” a very small amount of money by spending much more than we would have otherwise.
Yeah buddy. I don’t think they even looked at what I wrote, but I was standing there ready with my “I dare you to question this” face on. Just in case.
Am I the only one who doesn’t have problems with the grocery store? I can find what I want easily (and yes, I do buy by unit price). I’ve never (in three cities) had to wait behind more than six people in line, or for a long enough time that I’d bother checking my watch. When business is slow and I engage in a bit of chitchat with the cashiers, I’ve always found them friendly and polite. On the occasions where a fellow shopper’s cart is blocking the aisle, or my own is, the other shopper has always been polite about moving it or asking me to move it. The only problem I’ve ever had at the store is buying too much at once, so I have a hard time getting it home (I walk or bike). What am I doing right, here?
Growing up in a small town, I can remember going to the grocery store with my parents every friday night. We’d eat supper at my Grandmother’s house and then off to the store. It was a social occassion that I truly miss today.
Today, I don’t mind going to the grocery store. Mommajesus, babyjesus and I went saturday afternoon and spent a hour and a half - the heat index here was 114 saturday and the store was cooler than the house. We always use coupons if we have them - saved about $12, thanks to Kroger doubling them - and then can splurge on a few things like the Heath Bar Klondike Bars we got and the stuff to make a Key Lime pie.