Super Sized Shopping

Today I learned that I was out of the country long enough to have almost completely forgotten what the American supermarket experience is like. I mean, it’s not like I haven’t stepped foot inside a large supermarket in over a year; it’s just that it didn’t happen all too often in France, and there’s also truly nothing like an oversized, professionally merchandised American supermarket—so much so that I felt like an alien visiting Planet Earth for the first time.

I entered the surprisingly sparklingly renovated Safeway on Church and Market and immediately entered panic mode. The place felt cavernous, on a whole other scale than the cramped aisles of Parisian supermarkets (even the upper crust ones). And it was meticulous! This is Safeway, one of the biggest chain markets in California, hardly a paragon of the dreamy natural food market-type places that I prefer to frequent. I’ve seen Safeways with dirty floors and crap lying around in the aisles. I’ve seen this particular Safeway trashed from hordes of shoppers picking through Halloween candy and thronging the check-out aisles. This was a shinier, more soothing Safeway—and the squeaky-clean grandness kind of freaked me out.

I needed to grab lemons and tomatoes from the produce section, nothing more, but I wound up spending close to ten minutes wandering around because there was just.so.much stuff! Completely overwhelming! There was produce to last for weeks and weeks and weeks. The fruits were enormous (I was kind of scared of the oranges; don’t even get me started on the melons). I agonized over buying a five-pound bag of clementines, as I haven’t eaten them for a while and it seemed like a brilliant idea…but five pounds? Really? Can’t I just pick out a half dozen? (Not) surprisingly, that wasn’t an option at Safeway. I ultimately decided against the excess. Moving onto the veggies, I saw varieties of cauliflower I’ve never, ever seen in my life—green, orange, purple (ooh, pretty!)—which left me to wonder, have these always been around, or has there been some new, radical G-Mod breakthrough since I left America? In fact, there were nearly endless varieties of everything—“omnivore’s dilemma” indeed. At the fanciest Monoprix in Paris, you still get a tiny produce selection. All fruits, whether at the farmer’s market or at the hypermarket, are miniscule relative to here (and they taste soooooooooo much better, to boot).

Another strange phenomenon was occurring in the produce section. All the Safeway employees were saying hello and asking if I needed help finding anything. Imagine this level of service in France! You practically have to chase and then put employees in a headlock to get help. Well, I also suppose that considering the breadth of products in the produce section alone, it’s not an asinine assumption that one might need assistance locating something.

Speaking of finding things, it took me a while to wade through the double-wide aisles to get the rest of the items I needed—not just because the store is so incredibly huge, but also because of (you guessed it) the variety of products to choose from. Over 20 types of mustard? Pfft. This isn’t even France, where moutard is king. Indecision paralysis overcame me in the laundry detergent section. I think there were more types of detergent than there are of yogurt in France, and believe me, that is saying a lot (every market there, whether a hole in the wall or the Monoprix, has a dedicated yogurt AISLE). At that point, I had reached the end of my shopping list, not to mention the end of my rope. I berated myself for no longer being the speedy, efficient shopper I once was and just grabbed the first jumbo-sized (of course) jug I saw. That’s another thing that was a little hard to swallow—there’s not much super/economy-sized products in Paris. Apartments and fridges aren’t big enough to house the likes of Costco goods. I got used to buying enough of what I needed / could feasibly carry on a ten-minute walk home.

The check-out process was lightning fast and the checker was chatty and sunny and I lingered for an extra moment just to continue our conversation, he was so nice. (We can score two bonus points for America, there.) He reminded me that the paper towel six-pack (which filled nearly half my shopping cart) I bought was buy one, get one free. I did something absolutely shocking and turned down the free six-pack. It violated all the rules of my bargain-hunting cultural heritage, but my goodness, I just couldn’t stomach taking home a dozen bulging rolls of paper towels. It just felt too…too, you know? It seems living in France has heightened my awareness of American glut, but I’m back and so I’d better get reacquainted enough so that I don’t get paralyzed every time I go to the supermarket.