Life in the Fast
Aisle
by Margie
Cubertson
I hate the fact that my
mother could comparison shop in the grocery store.
She was good, seemed to come by it naturally. I
am not so blessed.
Certainly some genetic
snafu has taken place.
Not one to give up, I still
try. Yesterday, I went to Kruger’s armed
with a satchel full of newspapers, a large
notebook, several calculators and some prayer
beads. I proceeded to aisle three and set up camp.
I was soon joined by several curious shoppers.
After just a few minutes they were hooked.
Electricity was in the air,
"Could you pass me the gourmet cleansers
section from the Herald?" "Anybody want
the absolutely-no-nutritional-value page?"
"Hey, who cut out all the toilet paper
coupons?"
I've come to find that one
can meet truly fascinating people on the floor of
the grocery store. But, stick with aisle three;
never aisle seven--those people are weird.
Just as we were rounding
the last corner of the store, the announcement
came, "Attention Kruger shoppers, the store
will be closing in 10 minutes". Oh no. I
guess I never realized how many groceries
seventeen people need.
Today this is no longer a problem. I have a
system. Read on.
Margie’s Fail-Proof System for Comparison
Shopping™
1. Buy one of everything
you have ever bought or could ever imagine buying.
Mark each item with a fancy marker: put down the
price, the store, purchase date, item's weight
when fresh.
2. Do not forget to take
pictures of the items and attach the pic to the
item. This is important in produce, as your
sample avocado will eventually look like a large
piece of tar and you may mistake it for that
month-old chile you stepped on while baking
brownies last night.
3. Get a large,
refrigerated filing cabinet. About 7 X 8 feet in
size should do.
4. Alphabetize your items,
but don't double-alphabetize. It would really be
embarrassing to search for your sample tomato,
looking for it under the vegetable file, when you
discover that the tomato should really be in the fruit
subfile.
5. Repeat this process on
the fifteenth of each month at every grocery
store in your area. Do this for twelve
consecutive months.
6. Once you get this system
in order, all you’ll have to do is hook your
filing cabinet up to your trailer hitch and let
it roll behind your car as you drive to the store.
By the end of the year you
will have a scratch and sniff version of what my
mother held in her head: an example of all the
food items you would ever be interested in buying...the
WORLD at your fingertips. If this system is
maintained for three generations or more, you
will have a filing cabinet worthy of the
Smithsonian...or the neighborhood nuclear waste
dump site.
We might even be able to
market this. Sign up three friends, teach them
the system and then ask those three friends to
sign up three of their friends. This thing could
become big, really big.
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