Dear local
supermarket,
You have been but
a stone’s throw away for all these years. My one stop shop for … well whatever
you had on the dusty shelves at that time. I stopped writing a shopping list
somewhere back in our first year together. What I wanted was of no import! It was
your shelves that determined what we ate.
But of course!
Eat local, as
they say. Only buy the freshest of ingredients and let the seasons determine
what you plate up day after day. I never could find a good recipe for chicken
feet, oranges and apples, but I assure you – I tried. I hope one day someone
buys that AU$25 punnet of withering blueberries, you know the ones tucked away
in the deep dark corner of your room temperature refrigeration ‘system’? In any
case, you should certainly continue with importing blueberries, times might
change, right?
In recent months,
you felt the winds of change blowing right through your isles. I know you did,
because suddenly there was rampant renovation underway. This included the installation
of a refrigeration and freezer system that looked as though it was designed to
do as the name suggests. The car park guards got new blue shirts. The pothole
that went below sea level was repaired, after an adventurous nine months of
actually driving through it. New registers were installed. Isles were expanded.
Your products did not change, but you were making an effort. That much is
clear. Yes, my old friend, you knew that a multinational was moving into your
patch. Finally, it was time to compete.
I recalled with
fondness an earlier time when your efforts were somewhat shallower, cosmetic
you could say. Remember when management purchased that compact of blusher, and
made it mandatory for the checkout chicks to wear it during work hours? For a while
there (I assume, until the compact ran out), all the ladies had little red
circles of blusher on their cheeks. I do not think it was applied to illuminate
the cheek-bone, but rather to ‘look as though we give a shit (but we don’t want
to spend a dime), so we better objectify our female staff’. I would have been
happy to give some quick makeup tips. For future reference, blusher does not go
on as a circle. But now I’m just being picky.
In more recent
times, I was excited to see a wheel of washed rind perched happily in the new
fridges. Oooh! I exclaimed. How exciting. It’s not that I don’t trust the ‘new
you’, but old habits die hard and I did find myself checking the expiration
date before I went any further. Alas. It expired some months ago. Given that
this cheese has never been for sale before, and you import all dairy products,
I wonder how long that wheel had been buried out the back? A year? Have to fill
all the new shelves with something I suppose!
In what was to be
my last foray with you and your dying monopoly on this side of town, I was
forced to buy a phone card from that sour faced woman perched on her
stool-throne. ‘What!?’ she spat at me as I woke her from slumber one last time.
I stopped using words with her a long time ago, and now just let the kina do
the talking. With a shudder I took my card and left. Fare thee well.
At the checkout
the ladies moved slowly. I stared at the wall. And stared some more. My girl
pulled all the Schick razor blades down from the display. Then I think I saw the
checkout chick staring at the wall too. In the distance was the sound of a
rotating saw and the not-so-faint aroma of toxic chemicals wafting through the
supermarket and over the bakery as people compulsorily worked around the clock
to complete the transformation. After an eternity, we exchanged words.
She says to me
“Now we have to compete, you know?”
Yes, I do.
The glistening,
functional and fully stocked evil multinational has opened its doors.
Like a moth to a
flame, as they say.
Time to find something else to talk about!
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