ANDRE BEGIN

I was doing errands early one Sunday morning, to enjoy a quiet, crowd-free grocery shopping experience when I met them… a family driving the shopping cart of chaos.

As somebody who typically does the grocery shopping with a list in hand, with items listed in the order in which they appear in the store, preceded by a thorough review of the week’s sale flyer and a high-level inventory of our kitchen cabinets and pantry, their process was bizarre to me.

The reason I plan my shopping so meticulously is that at 60, I just don’t have the time, the energy nor frankly, the interest to navigate lengthy grocery aisles more than once. When you consider that when running errands, I may be visiting more than one store to scoop up deals, saving steps is as important as saving money.

To see a family with no shopping list, tossing items in the cart like they were on a game show, with every out-loud question eliciting spirited debate, was both awe-inspiring and weird to me at the same time.

Then, as they were figuring out what they were missing, they’d go back to an aisle they had already visited to pick up items they had missed, creating a back-and-forth that had me thinking about picking up a box of motion sickness tablets.

Meanwhile, with two teenagers circling the cart like moons orbiting a planet, it left little room to squeeze by without accidentally sending a skid of 24-roll bathroom tissue cascading to the floor, creating an even bigger traffic jam.

Their leapfrogging approach defied principles of logic and organization, yet their grocery cart was still filling steadily. Wasn’t that the point?
What started out as a calm, serene shopping trip for me quickly turned into a race against time to hurry up and get out, as their manic energy was starting to rattle me.

Just the same, I couldn’t help but smile at watching items being thrown in haphazardly by the four of them, in sharp contrast to my much more deliberate and meticulous process.

But that’s the way it goes sometimes. I reminded myself to take a deep breath and to appreciate the humour in observing the sharp contrast. When it comes to grocery shopping, there are different styles, different personalities and different ways of organizing, and that’s OK.

From my perspective, their style was a little chaotic. But if that’s the way they like to shop and that holding brainstorming sessions in every aisle brings them together as a family, then more power to them.

The point is that we shouldn’t lose our cool at the different styles of shoppers in grocery stores. At one extreme, we have people who barrel through like they want to be in and out in five minutes while at the opposite end, we have those who like to linger, to pick up every item and to read every label. And then we have the many combinations and permutations in between.

When we cross paths with someone whose shopping style is vastly different, all we can do is to take a deep breath, be patient, and to yield to oncoming traffic when shoppers seem more preoccupied with the hunting and the gathering and less with the rules of the road.

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Sincere thanks for reading!
Have a great day,
André