The most insipid form of shopping has to be grocery shopping.
How can picking through mounds of vegetables, grabbing the last gallon of fresh orange juice and navigating the aisles with a willful shopping trolley even begin to occupy a place on the holy altar of retail therapy?
But mere mortals live on such basics as vegetables and fruits and pasta sauce and so, often find themselves in the environs of a Spinneys, Carrefour or Choithram.
Those of us that can delegate to maids, drivers and assorted help, the painful task of selecting tomatoes and okra – do.
Even then there is that quick stop in for the ‘whole wheat with sunflower seeds bagel’ or the craving for a bag of Lays that requires instant fulfilling.
On one such quest, I meandered into a certain ‘Group CEO’
He was dressed in a tiny, tiny pair of ill fitting white shorts, a sticky white T-shirt, cotton socks stretched almost to his knees, with feet shod in tennis shoes.Having stepped into the grocery store for a Pocari Sweat after a game of tennis, he was now looking at his toes in an attempt to avoid my gaze. Having only seen him in starched suits of gray, I admit a smile may have lurked bemusedly at the corners of my mouth.
On other occasions I have met a banker shopping for basil, a Sales Director grabbing baby formula and even my son’s school teacher – on ‘sick leave’ from school.
I have now trained myself to think of a supermarket as a sort of non-exclusive community club.
A place where you never know who you may meet. Where the entire community may congregate based on their food habits. Where toddlers may run around free commanding their own four wheels, maids may co-ordinate the daily milk and bread buying with a little gossip. Where lost pets may be advertised along side a yoga class.
The great leveler, the supermarket, is now mandatory in any retail offering worth its salt. In fact, in many, it acts as an anchor store.
Its where you can get everything, even the perfect cross sample for retail research!
