Tuesday night, on the way home from a couple sets in San Francisco, I knew I was out of milk, so I stopped at the 24 hour Safeway near my home at around 1 in the morning.
As I was walking into the store, I decided I may as well do a full-fledged shopping trip.
Late night grocery store is kind of surreal. The staff, although skeleton, massively outnumbers the customers. It’s an opportune time to restock the shelves, so it looks like an industrial wasteland. Flattened empty boxes and heavy machinery are all over the place. A couple times I had to abandon my cart at the end of the aisle because the entryway was blocked by cardboard and forklifts. So I’d hike down on foot and carry my selections back to the cart. It sounds really inconvenient, but this clutter was more than compensated by the fact that there were almost no other shoppers anywhere. At least clutter can be pushed aside without regard for personal space and autonomy. And it doesn’t narcissistic, irritatingly wander back into your way.
My hunger and late-night induced laziness meant I bought a lot more prepared and frozen food than I might otherwise. But wow, the weak economy has really made bargains easy to find! Especially if you have a frequent shopper card.
By the time I got to the checkout, it was around 1:40 AM, and I was nearly drunk with over-tiredness. Just as I put the first item on the belt of the lone available checkout stand, a poor Apple Security guard, holding maybe two items, stepped behind me, his face falling at the sight of my forty or so items. I told him to go in front of me, and he was out of there in a minute. I Am A Good Person.
I suspect some of my shopping decisions were not ideal, but it was nice getting a mundane errand out of the way without dealing with other shoppers. Of course, it wasn’t perfect. While writing this, I realized I left approximately seven hectares of toilet paper in the bottom of the shopping cart. Oops.
24-hr Safeway? See, that’s the difference between Canada and the U.S. Who needs canned peas at 4:00 a.m.?
P.S. Yes, you are a good person.