Adventures in Thanksgiving Shopping

Tonight was supposed to be the Weekly Fun Facts, but we will push that off until tomorrow. There is so much more fun to be had talking about grocery shopping three days before the Thanksgiving holiday this upcoming Thursday. Tonight's topic is my annual Adventures in Thanksgiving Shopping...

Don't ask me why, but I ended up putting off grocery shopping until the Monday night before Thanksgiving. Actually, I did to a little shopping on Saturday, but the crowds were so crazy, and the people so rude, I did the bare minimum and decided to shop later on... Well later on is now and boy, I am not sure that Saturday was all that crazy now. At 7 pm, there were so many people in the grocery store that you could not go down any aisle without having to ask someone to move.

The crowds were one thing, but the way they were behaving was very entertaining. Granted, I went shopping because I HAD to go shopping, but it was fun to stand back and watch all of the activities going on around the store. For starters, in the produce aisle, there were people rapidly pushing carts around the fresh produce like it was a NASCAR track. I didn't know the shopping carts cornered that well, especially with their high center of gravity. People were in the fresh produce section literally grabbing fresh vegetables without even looking at them and then tossing them into the carts.

As I struggled to find my way into the bakery section, it was very difficult to find any loaf of bread that was not over $4.00 per loaf. All of the inexpensive bread (primarily used in making turkey stuffing) was gone, the shelves were almost licked bare. You could not even locate a crumb where the bread had been placed. The people in the bakery section were not quite as frantic, most likely because they already had their stale bread for stuffing.

The second most entertaining section of the store was in the meat department, as you can probably well imagine. There you had people 2 and 3 deep, buried up to their shoulders in the open freezer boxes, digging for that perfect turkey. Not only were people looking for that perfect turkey size, but they were looking for the very few birds that still had the $0.29/pound price tag. Once someone was able to locate that rare bird, they would squawk (the people, not the turkey) in delight, hug the frozen turkey to their chest and scurry back to their badly parked shopping cart.

The fun part was watching all the people try to squeeze into that one opened spot by the freezer so that they can have a turn diving into the freezer and locating their turkey. I think it would have only been more fun if lights, bells, whistles and confetti would be included in the hunt for the perfect frozen, cheap turkey. The sad part was when some little person would look into the freezer, and only see a 12 or 18 pound bird way down at the bottom of the freezer. These people were so tiny, that I suspect if they tried to lift the bird out of the freezer, they would be pulled in instead. Occasionally, one would have to rapidly dodge the carelessly tossed frozen bird from a customer who may have decided to either go for a ham or just quit shopping altogether. Then, once that tossed bird settled to the bottom of the freezer compartment, people would literally flock back to see if that newly discarded bird would be perfect for them.

What made shopping such an adventure for this Thanksgiving was the inclusion of the electric carts along with all of the shopping carts. Some of these people would get so tangled up with the shopping carts, that you might consider sending in the search and rescue teams. One poor woman got herself stuck in the middle of an aisle, and tried to make a U-turn. The problem was that there was extra stuff in the aisle, so she kept bumping into one stack of product, backing up into yet another display, so much so that some customers came to her assistance to move the products so that they did not topple onto this poor woman.

Believe it or not, buy the time I was able to locate my remaining groceries, the lines (which had been insanely long when I arrived) were only 1 or 2 people long. Perhaps I entertained myself too long watching everyone else get stressed out, but all the same, I had the pleasure of going through the check out line much faster than it took me to navigate along the length of one of the aisles.

I pity the store workers this time of year. The cashier that took my money had been working at this particular grocery for all of 2 days and had no idea whatsoever where anything was. At least she didn't ask me if I found everything OK. What could she do if I couldn't locate that odd bit of canned matzo balls? Better yet, I had spent almost 15 minutes looking for pickling spices in the spice aisle. I had asked two employees who looked at all the spices and said with surprise, "Pickling Spices...huh...should be here....", and then wandered off. Another customer took up my cause (because the store employees had no idea where to look) and between the two of us, we located on small bag of pickling spices. So even in the heat of trying to get the last minute shopping done, there is still good in many people and they are willing to help their fellow human being.

Happy Thanksgiving to one and all. Enjoy your own personal adventures in Thanksgiving shopping. Hopefully when you do sit down to Thanksgiving Dinner this Thursday, you will all find a lot to be thankful for.

And yes, the weekly fun facts will be tomorrow, Tuesday. That way you can have some fun trivia to entertain all at the Thanksgiving dinner table this Thursday...

Don't forget to check out our website for business opportunities (if you are looking for one) or for some cool Holiday ideas.

Until tomorrow...