COLUMN: Man, woman and grocery store
If you want to see something funny, watch two guys go shopping together. It’s like watching a couple of people on their first date – they just don’t know how to act.
One of the major problems with this kind of scenario is that shopping is not a manly thing. I don’t care how you slice it and dice it, if it doesn’t include tires, yard tools or a moving vehicle, a man is simply doomed to even attempt to do it.
When a guy does attempt grocery shopping, there are a couple of givens. First, a guy’s primary objective when shopping for food is to get home.
Also, guys shop point-to-point, item-to-item where women have a systematic approach to grocery shopping that rivals a NASA launch at the Kennedy Space Center. Guys save their systematic planning and approaches mowing the lawn, plowing a field or a garden and trying to stay out of trouble with their wife or girlfriend.
For newly-married women or those who might think it would save them some time and effort to send their man to the grocery store for them, from experience, I would suggest it would be more effective to go outside and find a stray dog to go instead. The man will screw it up, every time.
If you haven’t any stray dogs, cats or even a mink or ferret and a man is your only choice, let me lay some ground rules for you:
Never send a man to the grocery store for more than two items. Male brains cannot hold that much information about something they care nothing about, and they will come home without it.
Never send a man for a particular brand name or size of product at the grocery store. They will never get it right.
Never send a man for tampons or maxi-pads. When men enter that aisle, they might as well be in another country. None of the words make sense anymore and they start getting dizzy from lack of testosterone.
Always send him with at least 10 more dollars than you would spend because the word sale does not equate in male heads and he will always buy the product in the most colorful or manly packaging.
Probably the most striking difference between men and women on the subject of grocery shopping can be found in their respective shopping carts.
In a woman’s shopping cart you’ll find things like fresh fruits and vegetables, spices like rosemary, thyme and allspice berries. You’ll find other things like raspberry vinaigrette salad dressing, croutons, air fresheners, three different sizes of Zip-lock storage bags and bouillon cubes.
A man’s grocery cart will typically be mostly meat with an occasional stalk of celery and at least a couple of 24 packs of the strongest soda pop known to man. There will also be razors, some sugar-cereal and the latest issue of Cosmopolitan, for his girlfriend of course.
The worst combination of elements is a man and woman team shopping on a Saturday morning. This is like watching a police drama with produce. The woman takes the lead in these situations, plowing through masses of slow, inconsiderate shoppers as they thump, compare and calculate the best values for at least six or seven hours per store.
The man starts off grumpy and then downshifts into suicidal with each obnoxious thump of the broken cart’s wheel and with every annoying question posed to him about which color of dressing would go best with the entrees. He slips deeper and deeper into himself, only living for the free samples given away by gray-haired saviors equipped with hair nets and crock-pots.
After a grueling six hours in the store, the couple finally reach the checkout stand and plop at least a cool $100 for their troubles as a shiny-toothed checker on the other side of the counter tells them they saved $11.71 on in-store savings. The woman will smile back at this information and the man will wonder how long he’d have to stay in prison for rubbing out a grocery checker.
So what’s the best solution? That’s easy, stay home and order a pizza.