Night Time Grocery- Like A Zoo Visit

After dinner tonight Carter asked me if we had a healthy dessert so I made her the five-minute miracle of Sugar Free Cheesecake Pudding with sliced strawberries. I was instantly hailed as the best mother, well maybe not those exact words, maybe it was the best dessert that made Carter instantly happy. The only problem was I used up the last of the milk in the house to make it. After the dishes were put away I decided to run to the grocery so I could have cereal in the morning without having to get dressed and go shopping to do it.

Since I have the luxury of being able to grocery shop in the light of day I am usual there with people who know the layout of the store as well as I do and could probably all win as contestants on Super Market Sweep. What I discovered or rediscovered tonight is that people who go to the grocery store at eight at night are a whole different breed.

The first, and most common shopper there was the man-alone-sent-to-the store-by –his-woman. You can recognize this species by the lost and confused look in his eye, his lack of cart or basket and the cell phone up to his ear loudly saying something like, “I don’t see red ones, are you sure they aren’t orange?” This group appears to be larger because of their inefficient traffic pattern as they Chris-cross through the store looking for some foreign item, but staying true to their sex, not asking for any help from people inside the store.

The second largest group is the working woman with the large binder of coupons looking to maximize her shopping dollars by comparing the store sales to her coupon choices all neatly organized in plastic sleeves divided up by categories, like Salas, dressings, condiments. I like to steer clear of these people at the checkout because the use of so many coupons more than doubles their check out time.

The next group is the people who bring babies and small children to the store when it is clearly their bedtime. These obviously sleep deprived people leave little children unstrapped in carts and walk far away from them as they are search for something on the shelf unaware that their child may fall out of the cart at any minute. When I see this I try and pretend I am looking for something near the child just in case I need to stop any attempted escape. It is fairly easy to do since these parents tend to leave the cart with the unattended child right in the middle of the aisle so it makes passing them next to impossible. They may mistakenly think it is safer there since the child can’t reach any items on the shelf, but they don’t realize it just makes they want to stand up in the seat to get the brightly colored box of cereal.

Tonight I also so a rare breed, the How-to-shop-for-healthy-food class from a local weight loss program. Through out the store I could hear the nutritionist instructing people how to read food labels. Her advice was good and I wished she could just have been doing it over the loud speaker so all the other shopping novices could learn from her. Of course the other people in the store were having a very hard time just finding the exact items they were looking for so I’m sure that nutritional info would have fallen on deaf ears. Grocery Store sociology is very fascinating.