I Hate the Grocery

Does anyone out there actually enjoy going to the grocery? I hate. the. grocery. And if you can't tell, it's Saturday and I'm a working mother with three kids so that means I just got back from there.

I get my groceries, all $200+ of them, at the IGA in our small town. I hate that place. But it doesn't matter, I've tried the Krogers 15 miles from my house, the Meijer 20 miles from my house, even the famed (and very pricey) Dorothy Lane Market. I don't like grocery stores.



Since listing things I don't like is somehow the most popular thing I do on this blog, let me put into list form my dislike of the grocery:

Top 10 Things I Hate about the Grocery
10. Revolting bathrooms. Have you ever gone to the bathroom at the grocery. Good gravy. Do they take the same care and pride in cleaning up the areas where they store our food? They have an entire aisle of cleaning products but don't seem to have ever used even one spritz in their own bathroom.

9. Broken carts. Dear grocery store owner, Do you realize that every time I have to wrench my cart around the aisles of your store, you lose about $75 in sales from my frustration and haste to get out of there.

8. Odd portions of meat. Has anyone in the history of cooking needed 1.38 pounds of ground beef? And yet I have to spend 10 minutes sorting through the packages to find something that resembles one pound. You would think they would package the meat in quantities that benefit the consumer.

7. Aisles of crap. One of the main reasons I don't ditch my hometown grocery entirely is that while the other places do stock produce that was picked in the last six months, they have five aisles of crap in between the food that I'm there to get. I didn't come there to buy a lawn chair. I just want to get my food and get home.

6. Mystery produce. When I do find some lettuce that isn't completely wilted, I put it in a bag and then let the cashier guessing game begin. Invariably they have never seen this type of lettuce before and they have to consult their computer, their book and the lady who works behind the counter selling lottery tickets, cigarettes and baby formula (yes, those things are sold together at my grocery).

5. Handling everything five times. Before this food gets in my cupboard/fridge I have to handle it five times. Off the shelf into the cart. Out of the cart onto the conveyor to pay. Out of the cart into my car. Out of my car into the house. Out of the bags into the cupboard/fridge. Usually when I get home I'm already in such a foul mood that I sit in the car and honk until Husband comes out to help. If he's not available I don't unload everything--I leave behind his caffeinated nectar of addiction (Pepsi). Let's face it, if I left the oatmeal in the car, he wouldn't be motivated to make a trip outside to get it.

4. Organizing the cart. I don't know how to grocery shop so that my cart is neatly organized. I just end up throwing things in until I realize that the tomato sauce is being smashed into the bread by the big box of detergent I piled on top.

3. The list. Since I hate the grocery (see above), I don't go very often. Most times my goal in going to the store is to buy one of everything I've ever purchased there before. I do usually try to make a list but no one else in the family is any help. They seem to think that after I get home is a good time to let me know the things they were expecting me to get.

2. Shopping with kids. What else do I need to say about this.

1. Transport home. Even though I have a mini-van with a nice storage area in back, I always forget to see if I'm already transporting something like baseball bags or in the case of today, 15 pig feeders. I cram everything in the back, it shifts during the drive, and then I end up with half my lunch meat on the ground when I open the mini-van hatch.

Whew.The only good thing about just having been to the grocery is that I won't have to go back again for a while.

For all my grumping I do need to remember that there are lots of people who hate the grocery because of the stress they feel about not being able to feed their families. I am involved in a great program called The Benefit Bank that helps people apply for state and Federal assistance through programs like WIC and cash assistance (welfare) and food stamps. It's gratifying to tell young mothers, seniors and people who never dreamed that they would be at the receiving end of a program like this that they are eligible for some help. The Benefit Bank helps relieve the strain on local food pantries by helping people get the help they are eligible for from other food programs.

So how do you keep from hating the grocery? How do you help others not hate the grocery so much?

The Benefit Bank

Let me highly recommend that those of us with computer savvy help our friends and family members who have adjusted gross income less than $56,000 with their state and federal tax returns. [State filing available only in Arkansas, Kansas, Mississippi, Ohio, and Pennsylvania]

The Benefit Bank offers free step-by-step online tax preparation support, plus e-filing.

I am a trained volunteer for the Benefit Bank, which also helps low income families apply for state and federal aid programs. It's been a tremendous experience for me to apply my computer skills to directly helping people in need in my community.

Many people are losing their jobs and finding themselves hurting for maybe the first time in their lives. If you know someone who is unsure about their eligibility for aid programs, I encourage you to help them with a "Quick Check" of eligibility at the Benefit Bank Web site.

Delivering Financial Advice for the Family Assets

Whenever we meet with our financial advisor, I feel like I've just taken a crash course in Econ 201 again.

Ok, this is the point where I feel like I have to apologize for having a financial advisor. No, I don't have millions, only a desire to stop working before I'm 70. Of course, husband fully intends to croak in the show ring at the Ohio State Fair some day.

Back to economics...

So our financial advisor is explaining to us the benefit of our new strategy, called active management where we have our small investments managed like a big fund, with experts moving our money around from stocks to gold, to under his mattress, to back into small cap stocks, to Bernie Madoff (luckily we didn't get to that step).

We are having this in-depth financial discussion at our dining room table, which is very convenient except for the fact that our small children also have access to the dining room.

Our three-year-old daughter races in and skids to a stop. She is wearing a marker-stained OSU cheerleader outfit. She stares at the financial advisor, a very nice man who wears a tie, and finally says are you the pizza man?

We shoo her out and proceed to discuss the status of my 401K rollover, and how many millions of today's dollars we'll need to save just to keep ourselves affording Depends, Pepsi two-liters and State Fair passes.

Our four-year-old son marches in and stage whispers to my husband Ryan says that's the pizza man. Disbelieving his father, he says loudly to me, Is that the pizza man?

By now our financial advisor is ready to have us sign some forms and discuss our contribution to Roth IRAs (or something), when our son returns. Naked from the waist down.

He streaks through the dining room, forgets his pants and then streaks back through to get them.

After we had given our financial advisor a detailed peek at the family assets and accused him of working in food service, we sent him on his way.

A few years ago we would have been mortified by this whole experience. But as veteran parents, we simply tossed our son a pair of undies and finished our pizza.