Saturday, November 24, 2007

 

Super-shopping

Today Colleen and I decided to go grocery shopping together. We needed some produce to make a salad for pot-luck at church tomorrow so off we went to "The Read Canadian Superstore." Yes, that's the full name but most people simple shorten it to "Superstore." Beside it is "The Real Canadian Liquor Store." This is not the United States, so liquor must be sold in a separate establishment. But I digress. Superstore is a chain of grocery stores all across Canada. Don't believe me? Check out "superstore.ca"

We parked and I got a cart from the buggy coral. I got the last one, for which I had to insert a "Loonie." (Loonie? That's what we call the dollar coin that is now more valuable than your American "greenback." The Loonie has a loon on it, hence the name. And our two dollar coin is called the "Twoonie." Go figure. But I digress again). One lady was transferring her groceries from her heavily overloaded cart to the trunk of her car. But she had a problem: the trunk was not big enough!

Inside was everything a person could want. Well, almost! (They even have an electronics department.) We did a bit of browsing in the non-food areas. We sampled a new flavor of Kraft pizza and even a new butter with canola oil in it. Both were quite good.

Finally it was time for some serious shopping. To the produce isle! There we found everything we wanted, and more. But Colleen also wanted a bag of potatoes. The rather large potato bin was about half empty, and the best looking bag, the one she just had to have, was on the back side. Naturally! I leaned over the bin as far as I could but I could not quited reach what I was reaching for. But my wife is my "help-meat" so she voluntarily came to my aid and gave me a body check! This sent me into a line plunge for the desired potato bag. Having achieved my goal, I now had a new problem. How do I get out? My hands had to do double duty, grasping the precious new cargo, and walking and pushing my somewhat upside-down body out of its place of captivity.

At last we had success and we picked up a few more groceries before heading for the checkout line.

Superstore has several recently installed self-checkout counters. Colleen took me down do one and said: "Now you are going to get a lesson." She had used them once before but I hadn't even so much as seen them yet. So I dutifully scanned, weighed, and bagged each item. Then about half-way through our cartload of groceries, the machine jammed up. "Oh yeah, its a computer!" I thought. The on-duty associate and her superior both tried to "unjam" the machine, all to no avail. So Colleen and I used another machine. Everything worked fine and the groceries were surprisingly less expensive than anticipated. Yea! And the jambed up machine? It was still stuck in hibernation mode as we exited the store. So much for technology!

This ordeal required some comfort food, so of we went to Tim Hortons for a coffee, a hot smoothie, and some muffins.








































































































































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