The Rear End

Not So Super ... Market

loving and hating the Chippewa Valley’s grocery stores

Mike Paulus, illustrated by Beth Czech |

Is it wrong to love grocery shopping so much?

I understand that American grocery stores display obscene amounts of food and packaging. There’s enough food on our shelves to frighten people from non-industrialized countries. And there’s enough plastic and cardboard to outrage even the laziest of environmentalists. Sometimes, it’s enough to make me feel guilty. But my family tries very hard not to be glutinous in its shopping, and there’s just something delightful about strolling through colorful aisles of smartly arranged packages.

One non-food thing I love about grocery shopping is pushing the grocery cart. It’s an art form, to gently slice your four-wheeled shopping cart across the smooth, glistening tiles of a food emporium. It is Zen.

Sometimes I get caught up in the moment, and right in the middle of feeling one with the motion and energy of the grocery store universe, I fall into a kind of meditative trance and run over my wife as she’s on her knees trying to fish out the last 12-pack of toilet paper from the back of the very bottom shelf. But I’m sure she doesn’t mind such momentary blips in the Harmony of the Cart.

One question I have yet to answer is why certain grocery stores seem to speak to me, while others do not. Some stores stand out, and I’m nut sure why. Maybe a psychologist/marketing guru can give me some suggestions. Sure, some places have better produce, and some stock the ice cream we like, and some are strengthening our community and championing a charge towards healthier food by supporting only just and local food growers. (OK, there’s only one of those.) But some stores just call to me.

I may not be able to pinpoint to the je ne sais quoi that makes a Chippewa Valley grocery store awesome. But I can sure as shootin’ tell you what makes one bad. Two words: stock boys.

Twice, my wife and I have switched our weekly grocery store of choice because of stock boys. Now, we’re not talking about rude stock boys, though they are certainly out there. No, for some reason, our weekly shopping routine often falls on whatever day of the week our chosen store restocks their shelves. And twice, our store has actually switched their major restock day to the day we shop. It’s pretty much impossible to gently slice your shopping cart across the smooth, glistening tiles of a food emporium when there’s giant frickin’ pallets of canned corn and Emeril Lagasse spaghetti sauce stationed every two feet – and high school boys fumbling around with armloads of Diet Mountain Dew at every turn. This is not very Zen.


    I’m certain this a purposeful maneuver on the part of an underground league of grocery store managers to accomplish a singular goal: pissing me and my wife off.

In fact, I take back what I said about stock boys – they must be in on the whole hideous, insidious scheme. While the Chippewa Valley’s store managers assemble for evil ceremonies in their fancy Mason-esque feast halls, their stock boy minions gather in basement bedrooms to play Call of Duty 4 and guzzle BAWLS energy drink, awaiting their summons … to piss me off.

Upon the chosen night, once the managers have completed their chants, the stock boys see a sickly green light glowing in the sky, and they know the time has come to scurry through the streets like a dark, stagnant river, streaming into area grocery stores to piss me off by stocking baked beans right where I need to push my cart.

These are not coincidences. These are facts.

On a marginally related note, we always seem to be in Target on the day they run out of the chips we like.

Because of these (and other, less interesting reasons) my wife and I are looking into some Community Supported Agriculture organizations in the area. We’ve been talking about it for a while now, and it feels like it’s time to finally free up the money we need to support some local food suppliers that don’t answer to a corporation.

I love pushing that stupid cart, but I gotta admit, some things are just more important. And hey, it’s one more step towards liberating ourselves from those cursed stock boys and their menacing overlords.