When Grocery Shopping Makes You Question Everything You Once Knew

Shopping for food should be a delight, but it’s often a hassle

The golden age of grocery shopping is about twenty-three years old when you’ve recently emerged from college, feeling adultish. If you skipped college, it’s 19, when you’ve found your first apartment and now can buy whatever food you want, whenever you want.

You feel powerful pushing that cart, lining up your haul on the little conveyer belt.

This lasts a few years. The thrill of coming home with cereal, learning new recipes, and discovering the names of exotic vegetables does a slow burn throughout the twenties. I can’t remember how long this honeymoon phase lasts, but I’ll take a shot at five to seven years, like most warranties.

One day, you wake up and grocery shopping has morphed into a chore, a ho-hum daily experience you don’t give much thought to. Maybe you start using coupons, maybe you get loyal to Whole Foods.

It’s not as bad as vacuuming, more on par with laundry.

In your thirties, you discover Farmer’s Markets and non-profits that sell rejected produce for a bargain. This is the last gasp in the love affair — when you begin to take other lovers.

Somewhere in the fourth decade, grocery shopping goes south. But like a lot of American life, the experience has gotten worse over the last few decades. We have more options, but grocery shopping is more stressful.

It’s Hectic and Expensive

I drive up to Little Rock to get a few delicacies from Whole Foods about once a month. Mostly, I buy Not Milk and paleo treats and whole bean decaf coffee and sometimes hit the mini-cafeteria if starving. It seems being in the big city makes me hungry on account of calories burned trying to merge.

Whole Foods, despite being pricey, isn’t relaxing. Employers scamper around, obviously working their tails off. Customers crowd the narrow isles. The parking lot is too small for the store. The essential workers seem over it, and who the hell can blame them?

Before it was bought up by Bezos, Whole Foods reeked only of money, but this one just seems like a specialty shop where frazzled employees are working hard for their money. This doesn’t surprise me, as the Amazon model has probably trickled down into Whole Foods and now the essential workers are one step away from fulfilling orders in a warehouse.

The pandemic doesn’t help but when I have a chance to blame Bezos, I do.

Central Market, in Austin, is a mega-boutique store that sells everything. It, too, feels rushed and chaotic. The layout is something you better know by heart, or you’ll feel like a lost soldier behind enemy lines. The well-heeled are required to weigh and slap labels on all produce.

As a newbie, this feels vaguely threatening. The parking there is worse than in Woodstock.

Missing Key Ingredients

My local place, Brookshires, tries its best but is outgunned by Walmart. I go there because it’s closer and they have one thing I can’t find at Walmart — incredibly, there are some things you cannot buy at Wally World.

But the produce varies in quality. It’s not unusual to have to toss a bag of green beans into the compost.

I’ve come to like Impossible Burger, and they don’t have it. So I drive down the hill and make my way into Wally World.

Here in Arkansas, the Walmart stores are nicer, and I’m grateful we have one. But the food is so-so, with a small selection of produce. Like the other places, nothing feels relaxed: employees seem to be working to capacity. Also, I come home with a 5.99 shirt every fourth visit.

Too Many Choices

I eat a tragically mundane and predictable diet, but whenever I have to buy something new it’s a harrowing dive into a sea full of too many fish.

Have you purchased yogurt lately? Good grief, there’s Greek and whole milk and extra lactobacillus and flavored and alt-milk based, plus every combination of those multiplied. And that’s just here at the local grocer in the boonies.

The breakfast cereal situation is absurd but it’s always been that way. Meanwhile, finding a good selection of fresh veggies is tough.

Local Boys

The Farmer’s Market is where we get eggs, mushrooms, and seasonal produce.

My only complaint is when the amateurs show up during the peak summer season, because it’s warm and it’s something to do. They clog up the aisles and get chummy with the vendors.

They bring their purebred dogs and take up space while window shopping. They ask copious questions about mushroom varieties.

But hey, the merchants need their business, especially the ones selling trinkets and crafts and tie-dye.

Attitude of Gratitude

Shopping for food should be joyous. Somewhere, the love skedaddled.

Maybe I’m sensing the precarious nature of getting food, or the new knowledge that essential workers aren’t having a good time is impossible to ignore.

Most likely, I’ve reached an age where I like some chores better than others. Laundry, no problem. Yardwork, okay. Buying food in a crowded, tense world? I guess not.

Also — I’m spoiled and privileged. I can order online, and once you’ve gotten anything delivered to your door it’s hard to go back in time to getting it yourself.

I’m grateful every time I go through the checkout at the grocery that someone is helping feed me, but it doesn’t translate into a carefree shopping experience.

What can be done? I believe the open-air, Farmer’s Market experience helps. Interacting with food that comes directly from an individual, getting my own through gardening and foraging and fishing, and always saying, “Thank you” in the checkout line is a good practice.

I try to be helpful and not pester the staff when I’m in the store.

I do wish for the days when groceries were fun, an adventure, and a rite of passage into adulthood. Maybe I can recapture some of the magic by remembering how fortunate I am to have food I can afford.

Or maybe it’s time to volunteer at the Food Bank.

The author is a 4x top writer in food, psychology, humor, and crime. For more, check out her rantings and ravings and reality-checks on Medium.