A Busman's Holiday

I tagged along with my Snugglebunny while she did some grocery shopping for work the other day. Her employer has a charge account with Zehr's so that's where she goes. After months of working at the Buy Food it was a shocker.

The Buy Food is an old fashioned, built in the early 70s, neighbourhood grocery store of the type you don't see any more. They've all been bull dozed or turned into Giant Tigers or convenience stores or something. So I walk into Zehr's and it's like a Medieval cathedral; the ceilings are lost in the vaulted heavens, you can't see either end of the store because of the curvature of the earth and need a bus to get from Dairy to the Deli (transfer at Children's Wear). Serried ranks of bottles and cans await my purchasing decision. They have 20 feet of toilet paper. TWENTY FEET!! I've got 4 feet each for toilet paper, paper towels and tissues. And really packages of TP only come so small nowadays so I think some product lines ought to be cut from the mix.

They probably do in a couple days what we sell in a month. But I think we do get a lot of people who like the human size of the Buy Food and find the other stores a bit too overwhelming. Now the yuppie fellow who came in looking for coconut milk and lemon grass for his Thai recipe had to be sent away dissapointed... the Old El Paso taco seasoning and Wong Wing frozen chicken balls are about as exotic as my Fail Street and No Daddy Lane customers want to get. Ragu pasta sauce being on sale for .97 cents, now that's excitement.