The Grocery

The grocery store just down the street from me by and large uses self-checkout stations. Presumably, this is to keep labor hours down, but also, in this period of pandemic, it helps minimize contact between employees and shoppers. If you ring up a large number of items, a manager will still step in and help out, but they’ll ask you to step back as they bag things for you. All this makes sense, and I appreciate it.

One thing that did throw me off, though, when I went earlier last week, was their policy on reusable bags. I’d brought a stack of paper bags with me because I was expecting to use a large amount of plastic otherwise, and got stopped at the door and told I couldn’t use them.

I get the idea. It’s a potential point of contact, a variable that the store can’t control. These things have to be minimized. I had already thought of this; if someone was going to ask to help with my bags, I was going to decline. They didn’t know that, of course, and outwardly, I looked like a young’un with no mask and some headphones on. I probably looked like I absolutely didn’t care.

It did get me thinking, though, as I went through the store, what other precautions were they taking? There was a maximum occupancy notice on the outside, for example (though I don’t know how they were keeping track), and there were stickers on the floor so you could stand a safe distance away from the deli counters, but also, policies I’ve seen other stores implement didn’t seem to be in effect here. Restricting aisles to one-way lines, for example, would help keep customers at a distance from each other. I didn’t see any of that, and there certainly were a lot of times it would have helped.

Or the most basic of cautions: If I had an item in my cart and changed my mind, what happens to the item I stuck back on the shelf? The freezer door handles, were those disinfected?

Obviously, I can’t expect any sort of public business to be absolutely safe, but I also know that this sort of business will do the bare minimum of safety if it thinks it can get away with it. I don’t really watch TV, but I assume they’re the type of business to praise the hard-working nature of their low-level staff in their advertisements without acting in their interest.

I don’t have a fix for this, or I didn’t in the moment, at least. It wasn’t like I was going to start an argument or try and run past with my paper bags. And I certainly don’t begrudge the effort that’s already been put in, nor do I want it to stop any time soon. If anything, I’d want more things like this. The thought of an essential service just keeping up appearances worries me, though, and that’s what I wanted to write about.

-F

Ah Yes Tuesdays Are Made For Blogs

A common observation in this day and age is that with all the chaos consuming the world, one of the most difficult things to remember is what day it is. Twitter accounts like @And_Dads_Car reminding people of specific days (Saturday, for this specific account) have comments under each post praising that, if it weren’t for them, they’d have no idea what day it was. And sure, some of these comments are probably facetious, but not only are there a lot of them, but I’ve seen similar events have happened in real life, too, so it’s not like I can’t believe this phenomenon doesn’t exist.

All that being said, it’s not something I’ve noticed in my own personal life, and for a while, I was struggling to explain why. Really, I think a part of it has to do with these blogs. Not exactly the act of blogging itself, but when I do it.

Here’s a bit of “how the sausage is made” for you, I don’t really write blogs in advance. Sure, I might think of a topic or two, or have a backlog of topics (I already have an idea of what I want to write about next week, for example), but I don’t really have too many notes in advance besides that. I’m a “pantser” one might say. And this isn’t the only writing project I keep assigned to a specific day -- there are multiple. With only one at max per day, it’s been much easier to think about things like, “Ah, today’s the day I write my blog” or whichever project it is. I’ve been keeping up this pattern for long enough that it just works now.

-F

Birthdays

At some point, you don’t really feel older.

I know it’s a bit silly of me to be writing about this sort of stuff at the age I actually am to the audience I actually have, but it’s not like I’m the only one with this observation either. Patton Oswalt did an entire bit about only being allowed twenty birthdays throughout one’s entire life. It’s the same reason, I imagine, that businesses only really break out the special branding for “special” numbers, though I did a whole post about anniversaries way back when that argued against that part of that too.

And I get people look for any excuse to throw a party. I try to keep an open mind regarding the common complaints against “gender reveal” parties for that very reason -- though the lesser-heard complaints involving how they misuse the term gender and enforce a binary are legitimate, this is more against people who decry the pageantry of it all. But especially right now, when it’s hard to throw a party, it’s really hard to be especially interested.

I did get some nice presents, though, so there’s that.

-F

The Frozen Aisle

I’ve started making preprepared meals more because of, well, a lot of reasons that I imagine are obvious, and one thing I’ve noticed is a lot of them include these odd ingredients just for the sake of having them. A thing of fried rice out of a package has, like, corn and peas and all kinds of other things that I don’t find in fried rice anywhere else. I’m not sure what to make of this, honestly. Like, I imagine it would be cheaper if it just, you know, didn’t have these things in it. On a similar note, sure, some things I would expect in fried rice -- egg, for example -- might be a bit too expensive for the mass-production market, and maybe corn looks a little like egg if you squint, but still.

I wonder if that messes with the expectations of people who wouldn’t otherwise cook these sorts of foods. “Oh, I’m making fried rice, gotta go get some peas” is a sentence that’s surely been uttered at least once because of these products. But at the same time, it’s not like I’d want to argue too hard about a food’s authenticity, especially with something so easy to make. So while I could lean back in my chair and say something like, “My grandfather made it better,” that way leads to gatekeeping other aspects, and if I’m going to gatekeep anything, food’s not going to be it.

-F