1) Clean – floors, aisles, bathrooms, faces
2) Pretty – displays, dishes, cheese assortments, produce
3) Friendly – baggers, checkers, managers, patrons…
4) Normal patrons – nobody’s slubbing around in pajama pants and house shoes.
5) Quiet – I can think about if the Kroger brand is a better deal than the name brand WITH a coupon!
6) The DEALS! – weekly specials, manager’s specials, Hank in the produce department marking down the only-slightly wilted celery
7) The Gas Points – I paid $1.67 per gallon of gas instead of $2.17 just for buying my beautiful groceries there!
8) Normal patrons – nobody is yelling obscenities at nearby children
9) The variety – everything from organic flour, to frozen bar-b-que, to the awesome, in-store, freshly squeezed orange juice that the nice lady was letting people sample!
10) The “preferred customer” status for frequent shoppers = personalized coupons that arrive in my mailbox
11) The Parking – huge lot (also clean and pretty) that is never more than halfway full
12) Normal patrons – nobody is braless and standing this far from my ear on my aisle yelling the name of her child on the next aisle. Not kidding.
13) Discount flowers – Yes! They have a little tub of flowers literally beginning to “lose their bloom” that are steeply discounted! I can usually get a week and a half of loveliness out of them!
14) Clean shopping baskets – they all look new, but I know they aren’t, and somehow there isn’t any trash or stickiness in any of them! How do they do that?
15) Did I mention normal patrons? – I mean, when I smile, or say excuse me to reach the can of biscuits, they…get this…SMILE BACK. Some of them have even struck up a friendly conversation.
I am not sorry if I come off as being a shopping snob (as one of my children in particular likes to assert). Here’s why. I’ve been doing the shopping in my household for almost 25 years, and I’ve been to my share of stores in different states, on differing budgets, and in different moods. I’ve done the quick pop-in, the BIG TRIP, the essentials run, and been to the big warehouse stores to buy in bulk. I’ve shopped organic, seconds and dented, knock offs, and premium. I’ve paid full price, used coupons, overbought and missed the deals. I’ve used lists, forgot lists, never made the list, and went off my memory of the list I left on the counter in the kitchen. I’ve made my lists based on my menu for the week, and I’ve made up the menu for the week as I threw stuff in the basket.
But here’s the deal. Like everyone else who’s putting in some effort to do what’s right, I put up with junk every day, because I should. And there may come a day where I have to do that when I buy groceries. But today is not that day. And until I’m forced to, I will not voluntarily put up with junk while I complete the task of grocery shopping. A store ought to assist in making the feeding of those I love begin as pleasantly, in every way within their power, as possible. I’m paying them for it.
Thank you Kroger.
