The Suburban Grocery Store; or, A Yuppie Conniption

Housesitting for my parents in the western suburbs.  Needed to get a couple things from the grocery store.  Facepalming ensued.

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Sometimes, going to Jewel after not having shopped there in a long time can make you kind of grumblecakey.  

FIRST, because it's so expensive and you're disgusted with how much money you used to drop there every week.  (Now you do a lot of your shopping at local markets [how CONSCIOUS of you!], but you also buy a lot of your pantry items at Target and some other stuff at Costco [so don't go patting your yupster self on the back].)

SECOND, because it's SO MUCH JUNK. (It's not that you don't like junk food. You do like it. Which is why you don't need it in your face at every turn.) Plus, our global food supply chain is SO EFFED. 

THIRD, because you cannot find any damned shopping baskets. There are none by the door, and it's a one-way automatic door, so you can't even go back out to where the carts are, and you don't need a damned cart for the 4 things you're getting. There are no baskets by the other door either. There are no baskets under any of the registers. You ask where the eff all the baskets are, and the employee points to a stack of 3 dirty ones sitting against a random wall, and explains that they don't really keep many in the store. Because this is the western suburbs, where people regularly shop like they have a family of 80 and a hurricane is coming. 

FOURTH, because you realize you forgot the damned hummus as you're pulling out of the parking lot, and you need that hummus for a meeting. (Remember when you said 4 things? You meant 5.) And again, this is the western suburbs, so everything (or at least everything that's not a cutesy boutique in the historic downtown shops) is in a big box complex on major county roads with one-way exits and blocked turns and heavy traffic and it takes waiting for 2 different red turn lights, a U-turn, and a drive through a cratered parking lot of an abandoned strip mall to get back to the same damned grocery store. 

FIFTH, because you can't even FIND the effing hummus, because this isn't YOUR Jewel. You finally ask two employees where the hummus is, and they look at you for a second like they're not even sure hummus is a thing. Then they figure out where it is, and you go there, and you find the brand you want, but they have like 89 containers of the super spicy flavor and only a few of various other flavors, and they're all stacked mixed together at the back of the shelf, in no kind of order, with their labels facing the wrong way, so you have to dig just to find your GOD DAMNED ROASTED PINE NUT HUMMUS. 

But you finally find the last roasted pine nut hummus. And you relish in your little victory and say, "I am a ridiculous yuppie person."