I went over to the Jackson Creek Kroger, the supermarket closest to home, last night.
I needed to pick up some Twinkies and Oreos (Not for me, I swear).
The supermarket is gigantic and it unnerved me. The store is bigger than any supermarket that I’ve shopped in for the last year and a half—as I don’t think I stepped inside any large American supermarket during any of my visits.
Immediately upon stepping through the sliding doors of Kroger I actually felt small, lost, and confused. To think that I used to shop at the store all the time, knowing where everything was hidden.
However, things had moved around and I was confused. The bakery which was to the left, was still to the left, but I couldn’t find the Twinkies. So I asked, and found out that bread had moved to aisle 14—the first time I’ve needed to distinguish between the bakery and bread parts of a store in awhile.
After receiving direction, I wandered over to the front of aisle 14 and found (as I recall), salty snacks. Over an aisle, I noticed the light-bulbs, something I needed to pick up, so I picked them up, went to the back, and discovered the bread. The display was dauntingly huge, and I found the Twinkies located in the breakfast part, which seemed entirely… well… wrong.
The next stop was the Oreo Department. I opted for the plain Oreos, despite the fact I had at least half a dozen different choices.
I closed out by trying to decide what I wanted for Sunday dinner. Being a single person, I opted for crap, which I managed to burn, thus setting off the super sensitive smoke alarm.
The whole experience was surprisingly disorienting. It’s not like I’ve never seen large stores before—I used to be a regular customer of this Kroger. However, the supermarket I shop at in Weimar is small—not as small as a corner grocery store, but well below average. I would hazard a guess that the smallness of the Barcode Boy’s REWE Supermarket is something that I’ve become comfortable with, even though I do find its selection a bit limited at times.
However, the experience did bring to mind a question I’ve heard before: Is it really necessary to have 20 different peanut butter choices? I mean, you pretty much have two choices; smooth or crunchy, once you eliminate all the packaging.
Why do they put the bread in a different aisle from the bakery? Also, quick story, once returning from vacation my partner and I discovered some “bread” we had left in the cupboard. It was still soft and NO mold. So that makes me wonder, what is in the bread to preserve it for so long. I don’t even want to know. 🙂 When are you flying back to Germany? I have only 10 days left til I depart for Germany…
Choice is always nice, it’s just that sometimes you have *too* many choices, and you waste valuable minutes trying to decide which brand and which size and which kind (not to mention trying to figure out which is the best value!) But believe me, peanut butter is not just a choice between creamy and crunchy…some of the brands out there taste a lot better than others!!!
Oh…and you forgot about the peanut butter that already has jelly swirled in with it!!! Heheh.
I’ll be back in Deutschland on 4 January, although I will be there for six hours on the 29th as I transit Berlin.
I actually think the difference between the bakery and the bread aisle is the difference between items baked in the store and those that come from a factory somewhere else. At my local REWE in Weimar, there are two bakeries–what I assume is the semi-independent one at the front, and then they also bake bread in the back, next to the bread that comes from outside factories… sounds counfusing, eh?