By Robert Masello
It was inevitable, I suppose. One day, the laundry detergent would run out. The dog food would be gone. The trip to Costco would prove too daunting.
After months of honoring the picket lines at my local supermarkets, toting home one melon at a time from Wild Oats, or shaving and washing my hair before driving to Gelson’s in Pacific Palisades, that day came. Heeding my wife’s plaintive cry, “It’s OK to shop at Ralph’s! Even the strikers say so,” I once more entered a supermarket.
But I didn’t feel good about it. I’m a member of a union (OK, we call it a guild, but that’s just because we’re writers and we have to be special), and here I was consorting with the enemy. In the parking lot, there were lots of empty spots — left by people nobler than I — and on the way in, I kept my baseball cap down low, and my sunglasses on. I felt like Peter Lorre in “Casablanca,” furtively pursuing the elusive letters of transit. But what could I do? We had needs — we had to eat — and there’s only so long you can buy things a few at a time, here and there — I mean, what are we, French? (Soon I was afraid I’d be carrying one of those little reusable string bags in my pocket and getting up at dawn for fresh baguettes).
Now, I like to think I’m a pretty cosmopolitan guy. I don’t mind saying that I’ve been in supermarkets all over the country, pretty much since I’ve been an infant but there’s something about going back into one after you haven’t been for several months that really rocks you back on your heels. I’d forgotten what it was like to see big, wide aisles, stuffed with stuff, and in some cases with no one in them. It was like some Twilight Zone episode, about the last man on earth. They even had these carts, nifty wire jobs with wheels, that you got to use at no extra charge to pile your groceries in.
What an idea! And the store had everything! All in one place! I’d completely forgotten. There were fruits and vegetables at one end, a bakery at the other. A fresh meat counter for my carnivorous wife, a generous selection of tofu and soy products for me. How long this struggle for enlightenment will last, I can’t say.
And if one container of cottage cheese was close to its expiration date, right behind it there was another, with a later date. It was almost as if it had been planned that way.
Of course, I no sooner found myself flying — look at that, a whole section of food that had been frozen — than the overhead intercom brought me back down to earth. “Ralph’s is currently accepting applications for temporary employment while contract negotiations go on.” But are they going on? More and more, it seemed to me, there were no negotiations. In this new world I was living in, nobody seemed to care where you bought your food. Certainly not the mayor, who was as invisible as ever. (Was it only in New York, where I moved here from, that the mayor appeared to actually live in the same town as the people who had elected him?) “Ralph’s is an equal opportunity employer,” the message went on, which did make me wonder when, if ever, I had heard a business describe itself as an unequal opportunity employer. Isn’t it kind of unnecessary to brag about that anymore? Isn’t it kind of mandatory? Or am I wrong?
At checkout I was asked by a helpful, if somewhat flustered checker, if I had a Ralph’s Club card. My God, I’d forgotten about things like that, and never having shopped at a Ralph’s before, no, I didn’t have one. Well, in two minutes flat, they’d fitted me out with one — it even has a little baby version that I can slip onto my key ring! And it had given me an instantaneous $9.75 discount on my groceries. All for shopping at Ralph’s!
In the parking lot I discovered that my car has a trunk peculiarly well suited to holding grocery bags — I had come to think of it simply as the place where my CD player lived — and I couldn’t help thinking, this whole supermarket concept is an awfully good one, and would-n’t it be nice if people who lived in LA could shop in such places, free of guilt or self-recrimination on a regular basis? Right in their very own neighborhoods? I know, I know, it sounds like some crazy pipe dream, but isn’t LA the place where dreams like that are supposed to be made? (Robert Masello is a writer who lives and used to do his grocery shopping in Santa Monica).
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on January 3, 2004. Read the original PDF.