Does food shopping stress you out?

[Jonny69]

I'm starting to really avoid food shopping, I literally hate going to the supermarket.

First off it's not very far away so I walk there but I have to cross my road at a point where people are either nailing it off the roundabout onto my road or slowing down from usually way over the 30 limit. So they nose dive the car and look all braced up inside because they are braking way harder than they would have to if they were sticking somewhere near the speed limit. Men regularly don't stop and glare at you standing at crossing, women always stop. ALWAYS, even if it means an emergency maneouver. Sometimes a child might fly into the front of the car from the back.

The kind of entrance parade to the supermarket is an open area with a couple of benches and it's either occupied by some down and outs drinking Tennents Super T (although they don't ever bother me) or it's a hoard of kids. Generally they are being unsavoury, spitting everywhere, making lots of noise and making it hard to get a clear walk through. Sometimes vandalising the place and I've called the police once.

Outside the entrance itself is street spam. The same middle-eastern guy selling the Big Issue who has been selling it there for the last 2 years or so, only now he's not the spotty teenager he was when he first turned up. This irritates me. Get a damn job or learn that I see you probably 2-3 times a week. Every time I walk past you say softly "Beeg Issuuuuue" and in 2 years I've never wanted to buy your magazine. That's potentially up to 300 times you've seen me, you must recognise me by now.

The shop is literally packed with people who have never seen a supermarket before, or at least have never been to this one. They don't know where anything is zigzagging from one thing back to another. Oh and they're blind too, they can't see me because they just push their trolley without looking what they are about to push it into: me. I can only assume they drive like that too so I'm glad I walk to the supermarket. The screaming kids. And how can little old dears take up so much space? Is it their right to push me out the way to get to their carrots?

On the subject of olds why is Friday in the Supermarket like walking into a geriatric ward in the hospital? These people have *all week* to do their shopping but they still choose to do it all on a Friday or Saturday morning. Then there are the screaming kids, don't get me started on the screaming kids.

So that's it, I've fought to get my items in my basket and I've made my way to a queue. The other queues naturally move faster than mine but that's not what's bothering me at this point. Why does the person behind me have to stand so close? This is my space and you are invading it. Their shopping bashes my legs or they shove their basket forwards and it touches the backs of my feet. Does it not register to these people that other people are there? Had the other queues not been going down quicker than mine I might have considered allowing them to go first and I'll run through the uncomfortably close procedure myself.

The belt on the packing end of the till powers all my shopping down to the end and forces the heavier shopping to crush my veg. The plastic packaging audibly warns the operator that it is in trouble but its screams of pain are ignored. I have loaded it on the other end so that it is comparted into veg, meat, dairy and finally bread but the operator manages to mix it all up thus foiling my plan of simple efficient packing as it comes through and my shopping ends up crushed.

But finally I'm free, back through the kids, take my life in my own hands crossing the road and I arrive home stressed, posting about it on the internet. Does shopping stress anyone else out?

Added to my blog as usual for safe keeping...

[Dymetrie]

Tesco

[Pebs]

Food shopping isnt stressful until you have to do it with three kids in tow. I read the riot act in the car park....1 step out of line and you're all back in the car and I'll shop slooooooowly in peace. They're learning, we managed to do a big shop and get as far as the checkout before I handed over the keys and told them to GET OUT OF MY SIGHT BEFORE I SELL YOU TO THE GYPSIES!!!!!!!!!!!!! The poor lady in front smiled at me and asked how much longer the Easter holidays had to go....nearly 2 weeks *gibbers*

[Haly]

Doesn't tend to bother me usually.
The only time I find it gets really stressful is if I go with my Dad or my Mum (One's got arthritis, one's got a neck injury) so I have to keep an eye out to make sure my Dad doesn't get too worn out and end up in pain too quickly, and that my Mum doesn't get whacked into by stupid idiots with their trolleys.

On my own though, it's fairly simple. I write the list beforehand, go in, get stuff, get out as fast as possible Reduces stress hugely that way.

[Darrin]

Haly, I fully understand about the parents bit. My mother had rheumatoid arthritis and going shopping was an adventure in collision avoidance.

I learned at a VERY young age to put aside my respect for elders when we were in a shopping center. I was the small and nimble one that ended up running interference between my mum and the volley of shopping trolleys. Thankfully my brother (the american football linebacker built look alike) was the one to actually enforce my mother's space. When he put his 6'1" 235 pound zero body fat frame between an irate shopper and anything, that irate shopper was VERY quickly subdued.

I got quite good at the "You ran into me, I'm mortally wounded!!" routine.

One thing I was quite glad of, though. My mum was what people refer to as a power shopper. She always seemed to know EXACTLY where every single item she was looking for was located in the store, had made a complete list of what we were in there for, and had that list organised in order of how it would appear in the store. So my brother and I making a moving barrier for her was made additionally fun by the fact that we were doing it at an almost run!!

And Johnny, my mum also learned a rather funny way of dealing with checkers and bread. She told them flat out that if they crushed her bread, THEY were going back there to get a new one. Not calling someone to get another one, the checker themselves were running around the store to find the exact same brand and style, then bringing it back up. That generally meant that her bread and other crushables were packaged with the utmost care. She was always polite with them, but made it quite clear that things would get VERY ugly on their ass if they didn't do their job.

Oh, and Pebbles? As for my brother and I acting up in the store (yes, I realise you can't do this anymore) all it took was my mum reminding us of how big and thick my father's belt was to bring us VERY quickly back into line. One thing you did NOT do in our household was get mum pissed off enough to tell dad about it. You might as well just walk out in the middle of the road by Johnny's house and lay down. It would hurt less.....

[Haly]

Originally Posted by Darrin

Haly, I fully understand about the parents bit. My mother had rheumatoid arthritis and going shopping was an adventure in collision avoidance.

I learned at a VERY young age to put aside my respect for elders when we were in a shopping center. I was the small and nimble one that ended up running interference between my mum and the volley of shopping trolleys. Thankfully my brother (the american football linebacker built look alike) was the one to actually enforce my mother's space. When he put his 6'1" 235 pound zero body fat frame between an irate shopper and anything, that irate shopper was VERY quickly subdued.

That sounds extremely familiar to me! Although as there's only me, I had to be the small, nimble one dashing about AND the one to either take blows or try to get the other shopper out the way. Not so good for me as I'm only 5ft 4 now and was always little as a kid!
Just one of those things you get used to easily though I find myself still doing it when around able bodied friends too

[vix]

We have to go to the 24 hours tescos quite late and I still take a dose of rescue rememdy before I go. I can't cope in crowds and I getreally stressed when people don't realise there are other people around. I've been ok ish the last few times but sometimes it gets to a point where I can't think and we just have to finish as soon as possible!

I say I've been ok - its not ok really as I can't go to a supermarket on my own :/

[Dee]

Was stressed this morning getting everyones breakfast kit. Was full, and I mean full of chavs buying crates of Stella and WKD Blue and Nurofen

[Tak]

If I have to go out to do what I call the "big" shop it is always at 10pm earliest, although I generally do most of my shopping online now and get it delivered - for the cost of the fuel and the time to go out and do it myself, its worth the £4 delivery charge.
I then buy fresh/forgotten things as and when I need them on my way home from work.

I always prefer to get veg, meat, fruit myself so I don't end up with the stuff that has been cooked by the lighting or that has been used in a game of football out back

[Belmit]

Just had to go and search for this blog entry I wrote about three years ago. It was a top ten list of things I hate (absolutely essential for every blog that has ever existed). Supermarkets was number one. I'll try and find the rest later...

1. The Public in Supermarkets
If there's something that really bugs me, moreso than anything, it's the other people you see at the supermarket.

I have trouble getting to sleep at night thinking about whether the general public sit at home and are inciteful, witty, self-aware and unselfish, and only become clumsy, bewildered and miopic on their weekly venture to the shops, as an escape from their usual pleasantness. I also imagine that their kids are polite and mostly silent at home, becoming akin to air-raid sirens with a sugar addiction the moment they set foot past the electric doors, which they forcibly prevent from shutting by dancing around in the entranceway, preventing me from entering the shop without smacking them to the floor. And I'd do it if no-one could see me. One cheeky chappy was today playing football with a discarded cardboard label right by the Scotch eggs. He soon shifted when I swung my basket dangerously.

If it were possible, I would make it so that when I went to the supermarket there would be no-one from the public there at all, save for a few who were employed to stand next to things I didn't want, like pickled eggs or barley; it would be too spooky if it was empty. Inevitably, the product I want is right next to the one someone else wants, and they're having trouble deciding if they should get it or not, blocking my path to the thing I decided I needed before I left the house so that I wouldn't be faffing around like a tit when I got here. If any of you have seen the film Dawn of the Dead you'll know that it involves a bunch of people trying to rid a shopping mall of zombies so they can live there without fear of their brains becoming lunch. The supermarket feels like that to me. The public are mindless zombies, totally unaware of anyone or anything around them, and they are relentless in their pursuit of brains, or in this case fresh bread and dairy creamer. I was in the bread aisle today and I went to walk between two trollies with my basket, when a woman pushing a third trolley suddenly decided she was going to walk straight through me. She was talking to herself (reeling off the items on her mental shopping list) and her eyes were glazed over. I had to wait for about ten seconds for her to make it through the gap since she clearly had no concept of the fact that I was waiting there and, as I went to walk through the now vacant space, she absent-mindedly said 'Thankyou'. The ****ing nerve. I almost turned round, slapped her and said 'I wasn't letting you through, I had no choice but to wait for your mind-numbingly slow frame to drag itself out of my way, you vacuous hag'.

A similar thing happened by the bacon. I was looking at the ridiculously wide range of bacon products and trying to select one that screamed 'quality' but had a price that whispered 'tight bastard', when I noticed that a woman with a trolley was also looking at the same items. I am constantly aware of what is going on around me, which is what amazes me when others don't extend the same courtesy, and took a step back so she could get to whatever it was she wanted (no-one has ever done this for me by the way). She immediately pushed her trolley into the space I had vacated and started browsing herself. I had to take a look around to see if anyone else had noticed this unbelievable act of selfishness, but then I remembered I was in the supermarket and amongst the most careless bunch of tossrags ever to convene in one place.

The staff are almost as bad as the customers, blocking aisles with hulking great cages-on-wheels that are inevitably parked in front of a whole bunch I stuff I need. Two whippersnappers today were having a high-volume conversation about football which is fairly rude in itself, but one of them was up a stepladder blocking the special offers section and the other was in a completely different aisle. I tell you what, there's nothing a customer loves more than a member of staff being simultaneously in the way and obnoxious, whilst shirking their minimum wage monkey-duties. When I worked in a supermarket we were lucky to get away with just one of those.

That's right, I worked in a supermarket. In fact it was that exact supermarket. My opinion of the customers has not changed since I worked there, except that not only did the customers used to get in the way, they also asked inane questions. Some weren't even questions:

"Excuse me young man, I'm looking for Goodfella's". How very nice for you. I'm not of that persuasion but thanks for the offer.

"Can you tell me where I can find fish?" In the sea madam.

"Where's the ketchup mate?" It's over there, three inches to the right of where you were looking before. "Oh yeah! I must be going blind!" Maybe! Or perhaps you need me to walk you 'round the shop holding your hand like some sort of crazy orangutan trainer.

I'm getting a little off the point here but maybe now you can see why this annoys me so much. I haven't even mentioned the people who browse a shelf whilst holding on to their trolley at arm's length across the aisle, or those that go shopping together and go 'round the shop side by side with a child inbetween the trollies, blocking an entire corridor. And don't even get me started on the people who only go there because it's the only chance they get to see old friends and spend half an hour taking up a moron-shaped space in the meat aisle. Only today I went to go through the gap inbetween the aisles and there were two trollies at the sides and two people in the middle blocking the gap and chatting. I had to go and physically stand in front of them before they reluctantly moved, like it was a great effort to do so and I had spoilt their day or something. ****s.

Well I'm glad I got all that off my chest. I hope it helped you as much it has helped me. Cheers.