No Man's Land

I went grocery shopping for Autumn this morning and I got to say I really don't like grocery stores. Maybe it's because my first job was in a grocery store and I still have flash backs, or maybe it's because shopping is one more thing that I'm not that good at. Either way, here are some of the things I don't like about the grocery store:

1. Selecting Produce/Meat - I go to buy a couple onions and the woman next to me is giving a tomato the 31 point Toyota Used Car Inspection. She's smelling it, squeezing it, rotating it, thumping it, etc. Why is produce the only thing that you can buy in a store that comes with the risk of getting a bad item? I've never had to squeeze a Twinkie to see if it was good, there are people that go through and get rid of the bad ones before I get there. As for good meat over bad meat, it's a dead animal. How good can it really look? In my book meat looks good if it looks dead and looks bad if it looks alive.

2. Club Cards - I hate these things. The grocery stores save millions of dollars in research and they pretend that you are befitting by saving big bucks by using these cards, but in reality you're just getting the sales prices that everyone got before the cards came along, just now you have to be signed up with the store to get them. I used to intentionally only shop at the store that didn't have rewards cards, but now everyone in Vegas uses them with the exception of Wal-Mart. Too bad shopping at that place feels like shopping at an outdoor swap meet.

3. The Time Spent - I know that there are a thousand rants about the layout of the stores, I used to hear them all the time when I worked there, but they're true. Why is the bread and the mustard on the same aisle but the peanut butter and jelly five aisles down? Why is chocolate syrup next to the cereal but marshmallows are next to the pancake mix? Asking somebody really isn't an option for me. I usually work around the store five times until I give up and go home, where I will try to convince my wife that the store was all out of soup.

4. It Hurts My Back - It's not the lugging the groceries, it's all the women that keep asking me if I'll bend down and get something off the bottom shelf for them. It seems like no matter how many times I bend over I always come up with the wrong item and they ask me to do it again. The funny thing is when I finally do get what they want they never seem that interested in the item, but they always seem to have a smile on their faces so I guess they appreciate the help. Funny how this never happens when Autumn is around.