• by George Simpson , Featured Contributor, July 15, 2011

In South Korea, where apparently people hate to grocery shop because they are "the second hardest working" population on the planet (didn't say who was #1, but I think it is Nigerian spammers), a grocery store mounted giant posters of actual store aisles (in places like subway stops) and encouraged bypassers to shop with their mobile phones. While gushing over its success, the video didn't explain the hard part: how all of the orders were simultaneously delivered to thousands of homes "after work." Nor was any mention made of the media costs to wallpaper subway stations with what are essentially giant ads (however clever the concept).

I don't know -- there is so much to be said for the "experience" of buying your groceries in a brick-and-mortar store. It is hard to know what I would miss more if I were buying virtual groceries. Let's see -- there is the painful interaction with store employees who clearly hate their jobs and can barely hide their contempt for customers, especially at checkout; carts with stuck wheels that require advanced power weight training to maneuver the vehicle forward; and the fun of trying to guess prices, since they stopped affixing them to whatever it is you want to buy.

There are five grocery stores within a reasonable drive of where I live. One of them is independent. The others are chains -- three of them the same chain, but a few miles apart.

I like the three chain stores the best. They are the biggest, and have the best fruits and vegetables and meat. They are also not filled with women who stop dead in the isles to "catch up" and cause rush hour-like traffic jams. On the other hand, they have more underaged cart drivers who tend to focus more on how far they can coast after a running jump onto the carts rather than oncoming traffic. But shopping at these stores takes longer because each floor plan is entirely different than the other two, so you can't just use your instincts to grab a box of cereal in the usual place. If you rely on aisle signage, you will wander the earth until the sun flames out and we die a collective silent, cold death.

I have learned that expiration dates mean nothing. Basically, if you don't consume what you buy within about 36 hours, you run the very real risk of having to convene a family council to vote on what "that smell" means. Moms tend to err on the side of throwing it out, while dads say: "What the hell, it's $19 a pound and we bought it yesterday -- throw it on the grill." If you include teens in the deliberations, you can safely assume they won't eat it, no matter what the final decision. Gross!!!

In New York, it is not uncommon to see items that need constant refrigeration spend an hour or so on hot sidewalks before the enthusiastic workers can get them into the storeroom.

I don't know about you, but I don't buy anything that isn't at waist level or higher on the aisle shelves. And for goodness sake, unless you are in Pilates five days a week, PLEASE bend from the knee and not the waist if you are perusing the bottom shelves.

While I appreciate all the mathematical calculations provided so I can deduce that peanut butter or pancake syrup is really $46 a gallon, I really don't have the time to think about such global economic issues. If I want to economize, I buy the store brands, which increasingly are not only packaged to look like the premium brands, they are every bit as good. I could just go to Costco, but it takes me a year and a half to get through their bottles of catsup -- and you need a walk-in freezer to hold one trip's worth of groceries. And what the hell is with the no bags? For the want of a nail the shoe was lost... as they say.

Air-conditioning so profound you have to wear a sweater in August; reaching back to beat the stock rotation game; finding my favorite brands on sale; smugly bypassing the fresh donuts; debating the butcher about the right mix of brisket and lamb to create the best (if most expensive) burger; reaching for some utterly unneeded item just because it is stacked near the checkout line.... I wouldn't trade any of it to snap a QR code while I wait for the next train.