Shopping rules!

(No seriously, we need them…)

In recent times I’ve begun to wonder if perhaps there should be a whole set of rules drawn up regarding the whole purchase of the weekly groceries in the supermarket.

But the thing is I’m not exactly sure what rules I think need to be brought in.

It’s not like I’m suggesting that all the trolleys should be driven down the left hand side of the aisles or anything.

Or I’m not even saying that a trolley driving licence should be brought in and that nobody under, say fifteen, should be allowed to push one, even if I think that would greatly ease some of the worst supermarket congestion.

Nor indeed do I even dare suggest that store detectives spend at least some of their time operating trolley ‘lack of speed’ traps and pull over and eject from the store those who move along at a painfully slow pace. I’m not suggesting any of that, or hey, come to think of it, maybe I am.

You see this week I found myself behind the wheel of the trolley doing the grocery shopping and while this is not a new phenomenon, I did notice quite a few differences between shopping when I’m there on my own and shopping when my wife and kids are along too.

For a start I got to push the trolley. This is not really that big a thing I suppose and don’t get me wrong, I have pushed the trolley many times when my family have been shopping with me. It’s just, well, on those occasions my trolley pushing speed usually wound up to be much quicker than the browsing speed of the main shopper, who, when the whole family is there, is definitely not me.

In fact I realised that when I was in charge of the shopping and the trolley on my own that I didn’t have to quickly turn into the next aisle and hide a packet of chocolate biscuits under two bags of apples and cause a surprise at the checkout.

Instead I found that shopping was more of a mission of intent, a kind of challenge and I had set myself a target of an absolute maximum of twenty minutes, including checkout time, to get in and out with the groceries done.

Hey, why should it take any more? I mean I kinda knew in my head what was needed, all I had to do was go along, find those items, put them in the trolley, pay and go.

Okay, so it is never really that simple, but this I guess is where the whole rule thing could kick in. Like for instance making stores stop changing around where everything is since the last time you were there.

This clever tactic just keeps people in the store longer and the longer they stay the more items they are likely to put in their trolley, but it just drives me nuts.

With the stop watch ticking and having safely negotiated my way past two snail-speed trolley pushers, I got to the destination for bread and there it was all stacked up in front of me…cat food.

Well, okay there was dog food and rabbit food and bird food. But the bird food wasn’t bread and this is where the bread had been last week. I had lost precious time.

It was probably about then that I noticed some of the other men on their own in the store were moving along with a kinda blank expression as if somebody had just slapped them in the face for no reason. They too, I’m pretty sure, were looking for stuff they knew they had to buy and couldn’t find, but I did notice they kept moving anyway.

That was a difference. I found myself moving until I got all of the items I knew I needed to buy and stopping only because of some infuriating trolley driver or to pick up something I didn’t need, but liked. I didn’t however find the need to stop and look at stuff I knew I wouldn’t need or like, pick them up, read the labels, and then put them back on the shelf. And so with minutes to spare, I got to the checkout and even found a queue with just two people in front of me.

One however was a female shopper with a large handbag. That was bad news. After fishing in the handbag for what seemed like five minutes, she eventually found her purse, but by that stage I knew what was coming. Another five minutes of digging around though that wee coin compartment in the purse to find €45.83 in exact change.

I could see she had a €50 in the purse. “What’s wrong with just giving the €50 and getting the change, come on, come on,” I thought to myself as I looked to see that the queue behind me was now back as far as what was once the bread section.

But she didn’t and she was pernickity about what went in what bag when the stuff was being packed.

I’m not exactly sure, but I think maybe all the other tills had closed by the time I eventually got through and trudged off to the car thinking, best rule of all – get out of having to do this if you can…