Monday, December 30, 2013

Grocery Shopping

       Okay, so you’ve come home looking for something to eat and it just so happens that you have nothing in your refrigerator or cupboards. You have not even a slice of bread or a carton of eggs to munch on. So you get in your car and drive into town to find a grocery store to buy food. As you draw nearer to town you come across a fantastic store. This store has everything you could ever want. This store has an excellent deli, and bakery and only gets its ingredients from local and organic farms and butcher shops. This store also has the best and widest selection of alcohol you have ever seen. This store is perfect. But, this store challenges you. It makes you feel small and every single time you have visited this store you have somehow always picked the stupid shopping cart. You know, the cart with the floppy wheel and the handles that have been broken off. It’s not you, it’s just that every time you get close to this perfect store you suddenly don’t know where you are and haven’t the slightest clue as to what you are doing. Not to mention this store is a few miles out of the way. However, whenever you are in town you always visit this store and even though you may not buy anything it’s always completely worth it to step foot inside its amazing doors. So you drive buy it maybe because you are scared that you can’t afford anything inside this store. Its prices seem high and you aren’t positive that you make enough money to buy anything from it.

         So you go to the local smaller grocery store. This store had bright and flashy lights and signs for amazing sales. You step foot into it and at first glance it seems amazing. It’s got everything on your list, and they are all on sale! So you start shopping, and boy does it feel great. Milk, eggs, butter this place has it all. But then you realize… the sale prices aren’t sale prices. They are actually more expensive than that of the other store. They have just been marked down from an extremely high price so that they look like sale prices. You’re not actually saving money at all, and to top it off the stores coupons are all expired! The store has been playing you since day one! Angrily you stomp out of the market and hop back in your car and drive from store to store searching desperately for a grocer that isn’t going to price gouge you or worse: charge for bags.  You try the wholesale store which has most of what you need but in insane quantities that quite honestly, you aren’t ready for yet. You head into mom and pop stores looking for the things you need, and although they may have a lot of one thing that you need they simply don’t have anything else and you can’t survive the month with an overabundance of one item on your list. You have even tried the convenience stores but they are just too small and have only enough to last you a week or so at max that you can’t justify shopping there long term. So you go home, defeated and slump down into you couch and order Chinese takeout. But, you can’t live on take out for too long.

        You need long term sustenance, and the only place that has everything you need is the market that is miles out of town. You get in your car and make the drive up. When you get there you find that the entrances are blocked by carts and signs and you can’t get in. Maybe the perfect store saw you try all those other markets and won’t let you in its doors because you have the smell of gas station convenience store on you, or the stench of GMO produce on your clothes. You try and you try but the Grocer just won’t let you in. You try to remind this grocer of all the things you have bought for them and how you even helped them replace some of their inventory when they were running low! Maybe it’s because you used to shop at their sister store instead of them a long time ago. But this was before you knew of this store. This store is amazing. It’s got everything you want and although it doesn’t price gouge you it doesn’t let you get away with using expired coupons.  There are only two things you can do in this situation: you can keep trying to convince this store that you have the money to shop there and no other store has what this store has and if you were to be allowed to shop here you would no longer have any need nor want to get your groceries at any other store. Or, you can walk away and drive to the next town three hundred miles away and try to find another store like this one. Even though you know that it is just about impossible.
   
        You have never seen a store like this one. This store is big, but not too big, it’s got up-to-date features and has everything you could ever want. This store keeps you in check with its fair prices and ample selection. You love this store and were stupid to try any other store. So what do you do? What do you do? You want to shop here. You need to shop here.



I need you. 

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