My Two-Cents: The Case for Grocery Stores
This past week, I did something I hadn’t done in a while. I went grocery shopping. Which sounds wild, but it’s because I usually order from Walmart online – so I lack the physical act of grocery shopping in-store. And as I was strolling through the aisles of Trader Joe’s, I thought to myself, Damn, this shit is awesome! It's so awesome that it was something I looked forward to on Sundays in college. It cured my scaries. The Hyvee aisles always reminded me of home. I got my first job there. On Saturday mornings, my parents would take my sister and me to their now-defunct cafeteria for breakfast. My dad loved the place because it reminded him of his first job ever, working mornings at Sunshine.
We knew a lot of the regular workers. This familiarity with the aisles and vibes always gave me a slice of home in a different state. And I also love Hy-Vee's food. I love their Napa Valley chicken salad and Oreo fluff! Nothing compares. And the Sunday ailses stroll was my most coveted afternoon treat. But then I started ordering online because it saves time. I stopped strolling the aisles for a while. So last Monday, when I got into a fervent discussion with the cashier about how egg salad (which was in my cart) is severely underrated, I left the store realizing I had been missing something. Doing the boring, mundane shit surrounded by other strangers doing boring, mundane shit. Online ordering is much easier, but is it better? No. And half the time, my poor delivery driver gets lost on the way to my apartment because Apple Maps is a fickle bitch.
My grocery shopping resurgence reminded me that sometimes, we get into a new routine of ebbs and flows, and things from our past routine slip through the cracks. Leading us to brush over the fact that we are missing out on them. Sometimes it’s nice to see if they have any new Colby Jack brands to try. It’s fun to ask the person next to you if they’ve tried that weird frozen meal in their cart. It’s nice to grab a random mint at the register, you’ll throw in the bottom of your purse to never try. I’m often the first to say efficiency is always better, but maybe I’m wrong here. Sometimes there's an easier way to do things, but it’s not the better way. You’ll miss out on a different element in your efficacy equation that didn’t optimize for. I often feel this way with writing – I can direct ChatGPT to write something for me, give it feedback, train it better, and rearrange its output. Sometimes this is fun. But other times, I miss out on the complete reason I started writing years ago: getting completely lost in my own thoughts, only to have my words work them out. If ChatGPT irons out the kinks for me, I might have missed the real purpose of putting pen to paper. Letting the writing work on me, and getting lost in the sauce while doing so. And resurfacing from the sauce with a new idea that someone else can read, ponder on, and dive back down into the sauce with. To resurface later with a new sauce. A sauce I might miss if I never actually go to the grocery store, and opt to order online.
