Fewer Choices Please
December 10, 2007 by Tracee Sioux
Filed under Parenting
My favorite grocery shopping experience is Sams Club.
I think it’s because Walmart just has too many choices. I wander up and down the aisles frustrated, with my face all scrunched up, hissing at the kids to be quiet, I’m trying to think.
It takes forever because I can stand in the cheese refrigerator for more than 10 minutes comparing the price per ounce and the calorie per serving of each string cheese choice. Then there’s 20 minutes choosing between cold medicines, soap, shampoo.
It’s the same problem comparing brands of lunch meat, bread, chips, snack foods, tortillas, every stinking thing in the store.
By the time I come out I feel like I’ve been beat against the wall and I need a nap. I feel like I need a Phd in nutrition to read all the labels on the backs of every item that goes in the cart.
I always spend too much and who knows if it will even pan out in the end.
Sams is delightful. Cheddar cheese or part-skim mozzarella? There is one package of cheese sticks - buy it or don’t. They sell only two bags of frozen bags of vegetables, one choice in sausage, one brand of cows milk and one brand of soy.
I enjoy the fewer choices. I like the swiftness of the buy it or don’t shopping experience. I enjoy only having to buy toilet paper once every few months. I enjoy buying paper towels once a year.
And frankly, Sams still has samples that the kids and I truly enjoy.
I love Sams but I never get out of there for under $100. And, they have nothing my GFCF son can eat (except pears and ground beef. even the tyson chicken has milk).
I love sams too, but I do have to brave wal-mart once in a while because who needs a 2lb container of ginger? It is far more enjoyable to shop in Sam’s. Wal-mart honestly causes me to have frequent anxiety attacks. The isles are too narrow, more weirdies shop there, and there are so many choices that my kids go into a sensory overload whining freakout by the end.
Try shopping there with a kid who HAS SPD. He and I are one of the wierdos.
Walmart has inexpensive prices, but every time I go there, I end up feeling like I’ve been beaten about the head. It’s always packed and the store is huge and exhausting.
I also found out that because of how badly Walmart treats it’s workers, here in Utah their employees use 42 million dollars in taxpayer funded public benefits for the working poor (like CHIP and Medicaid).
I’m disgusted that such a huge and powerful corporation won’t provide their employees more than the bare minimum in benefits and wages. I feel bad when I shop there and I look around and see all the employees who can’t take their kids to the doctor so I can save .50 on hamburger.
So I try to limit my trips there.
That is a good point Violet. But when I go to Albertsons I’m disgusted that I’m paying $1.50 more for the peanut butter. Of course Walmart and Sams is the same company.
I know a few business owners personally who pay their employees so little that they qualify for welfare programs – but they live in a McMansion. They run a nursing home so their bread and butter is actually welfare money too. The fact that they are costing the rest of us so much money (we pay for the patients to stay there and subsidize their wages with welfare) so they can live in their McMansion pisses me off. They COULD afford to pay their employees a living wage – but exercise their *freedom* not to.
I must brave Walmart to score the fat free and low fat dairy products. Why Sams can’t stock light Ranch dressing or light sour cream – I dunno. But, it’s my sincere desire that they would.
Sensory overload whining freakout exactly describes how *I* feel after a trip to Walmart, Jennifer. The hubby actually kind of likes going so that helps. I do Sams and make a list for Wally World.
A lot of smaller employers do it too, but Walmart is a huge, profitable corporation and at least in Utah, they have the distinction of having the MOST employees who use public assistance programs like PCN and CHIP.
I still shop there sometimes though. It’s hard to pay $1.50 more for a bag of coffee at the regular grocery store.
Sams is fun. I know a lady who is so cheap, she meets friends there for lunch (they eat the samples).