LOL I'M KIDDING. No, that's a lie. This is going to be a discussion about Trader Joe's. And it's not going to be the kind of Trader Joe's discussion in which I wax poetic about how amazing their Turbinado Sugar Sea Salt Dark Chocolate Almonds are or how I could spend six hours straight in their cheese section (but they are! And I could! That post will undoubtedly come someday, but not today.) This is going to be a discussion about how I can only go to Trader Joe's maybe once a month, lest my blood pressure skyrocket and I end up hospitalized.
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| LOOK AT THIS. |
What is the deal with people in Trader Joe's? Wait. Let's back up. Let's start in the Trader Joe's parking lot, because that's a situation that probably deserves its own article. But it's going in this one. I swear to god there is some kind of a substance - a gas, perhaps? Being pumped directly into the parking lot, which causes people to act like absolutely vacant jagoffs from the time they arrive in the parking lot, continuing for the duration of the time they're in the store, until they're several miles outside of the vicinity. Parking lots are bad enough during the holiday season - I could write an entire BOOK about how much I hate parking lots - but there's something about a Trader Joe's parking lot that makes people completely incapable of looking anywhere, before they do anything, ever. These people will run over children. They'll run down the elderly. They don't care. They just want their cookie butter, and they don't want to walk more than 20 yards for it. I am one hundred percent honest when I tell you I will park in the furthest spot possible away from the store in negative 10 degree weather and sleet just to avoid dealing with these boneheads.
So then you go into the store. It's like the damn Lord of the Flies in there. No one has any regard whatsoever for the direction anyone else is going. They stop in the middle of nowhere. They'll park their carts smack in the middle of the cheese display and look at a brick of camembert for 20 minutes while you mentally jab their eyes out and throw them at their head. They'll dart across the store, cutting 20 people off and tripping over someone's two year old who's been inexplicably left in the middle of the floral section on the floor for a free sample of local fig and serrano pepper chutney on an artisanal cheese straw. AND THE AISLES! You go into a regular grocery store, and there's a clear direction laid out. One side of the aisle is up, the other side is down. Nooooo, not at Trader Joe's! Their aisles are about 1/8th of the width of a normal aisle, and it's a free for all! You better be either prepared to fist fight a path for yourself, or to wait 40 minutes at the end of the aisle until someone is done reading the label of every pasta sauce in the entire store (there are 300). Possibly the worst part of all of this is that you become a part of the problem by default. No matter what you do, you're going to get in someone's way or cut them off, because when everyone is doing it it's impossible not to. It's a vicious cycle. Every time I go into that store, I come out with at least 3 fresh gray hairs, and my next stop is always the liquor store (because my Trader Joe's doesn't even sell 2 Buck Chuck! Freaking Delaware.)
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| This is a picture I texted to my friend one day, because it was the only time I had been able to freely maneuver in this store. EVER. She responded with shock and jealousy. |
So, this is the way Trader Joe's is ALL of the time, and then during the holidays it's like this times 4500. But you HAVE to go! Because cheese! And those almonds! And CHEESE. I'm tellin' ya. White people problems, AMIRITE GUYS?
Ugh.
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