On their death beds, the people of my generation will lament the time the spent driving – sometimes daily – from grocery store to grocery store, chasing the freshest produce, the finest meats, the best seafood, and the lowest prices, when they could’ve been spending that time reading, watching a film, climbing a mountain, writing a novel, playing with their kids, or having sex.
My mother shopped in one grocery store for all of her life. She went shopping for groceries once a week. She made a plan. Made a list. Shopped. Moved on with her life.
Today, she would be considered an aberration. An outlier. A dinosaur.
There are grocery stores that have managed to place almost every grocery item you’ll ever need under one roof, and yet people in my generation now prefer to shop in stores that deliberately avoid stocking every item, necessitating trips to multiple stores throughout the week.
It’s insane.
It seems as if more time is spent traveling between grocery stores and pushing a carriage up and down aisles than is spent actually eating the food.
It makes no sense.
There are more than 30 full-size or mid-sized grocery stores within a 15-minute drive from my home.
Good food is essential, but time is by far our most valuable commodity. My generation has chosen to spend a significant portion of its time searching for parking spots, pushing carriages, waiting in checkout lines, and selecting food items from a multitude of shelves in various stores.
The 90-year-old versions of themselves are going to be so annoyed.
