The day my cart went missing at Food City
First, let me stipulate: I’m a big fan of Food City.
I like how they sometimes take generic hamburger buns, load them with sliced turkey and package them beside the hummus in the deli case. It’s low-brow, but right down my alley.
I also like that they stock vineripened, Grainger County, Tennessee, tomatoes in their produce department.
Too, I like that their packaged hamburger meat usually weighs in at a little less than a pound, which is just the right amount to make three, good-size patties.
There’s something unpretentious about the Virginia-based grocery chain that just feels comfortable to me: from the ’80s Top 40 music (well hello, Mr. Mister) to the speedy checkout clerks.
I’ve also noticed that the managers at Food City are often middleaged, which makes me think it’s a good, stable place to work. I interviewed the president of the chain once, and he was extremely nice.
I even enjoy Food City’s oldschool advertising jingle, with a twangy women’s duet singing: “Value every day, Food City.” It has a retro vibe that sounds like it’s right out of midcentury AM radio.
I volunteer to do most of the grocery shopping in our family because I find my trips to Food City relaxing. Plus, it helps me toward my goal of logging 8,000 steps a day.
Recently, though, I had an experience that was quite bizarre. In fact, it was almost as strange as the time my wife accidentally hugged a man from behind (thinking it was me) in the checkout line of a Bi-Lo supermarket (Food City’s predecessor).
A few days before Christmas, I stopped by my neighborhood Food City to pick up a few dozen items, including hamburger patties,
cheese cubes, Bomb Pops, pretzels, frozen pizza, milk, Cheez-Its, Mayfield ice cream — snacks for our two still-growing young men at home.
About two-thirds of the way through my shopping, I parked my cart on the aisle with the dish soap (I think?) and circled back to pick up some hamburger buns on the other side of the store. I even remember squaring up the cart near the shelves so it wouldn’t block traffic while I was momentarily gone.
I was only away for about five minutes, but when I returned my cart was missing.
“Hmm,” I thought. “There are three possible explanations here: dementia, theft or space aliens.”
At first I thought I was misremembering where I left the cart, and so I started to systematically walk down every aisle. By the time I made two complete passes of the store, I realized that my halffull cart was not going to materialize.
The next phase of my search was a little trickier. I decided that another customer had probably taken my cart thinking it was theirs. I’ve actually pulled that trick myself a time or two.
This triggered an awkward 10 minutes when I was walking through the store peeking into everyone carts. I learned that people do not like you to look into their cart. It invades their dietary privacy and makes them think you are a weirdo. Asking, “Did you happen to take my cart,” does not help the situation either.
After another 10 minutes of this, I was about to lose my mind.
I actually thought about leaving the store and starting over at another location, but I couldn’t bring myself to give up. So I approached two managers who were stocking shelves and told them my problem.
“Excuse me, my cart just disappeared,” I said, lifting my arms and knitting my fingers behind my head as if I were surrendering to authorities.
“Let us look,” one of the managers said, and they walked off briskly in opposite directions.
Minutes later, they returned. They apologetically explained that a Food City employee, thinking my cart had been abandoned, had restocked all of the perishable items and left the others near the checkout to be returned later. D’oh!
So, while I was frantically looking for my cart, another person was putting away my groceries. Well, at least I wasn’t crazy, I thought.
I would like to take this moment to coin “Kennedy’s law,” which will state that: Two humans, moving with resolve inside a retail store, might not encounter one another.
Every parent who has chased a lost child around a Walmart knows this phenomenon. A busy supermarket is like a corn maze during a third-grade field trip.
There’s a first time for everything, and this is a first time I’ve ever completely lost a shopping cart. It took me a few minutes to restock my cart, but I got a story out of it. No harm done, and I logged a few more steps.
The silver lining is that it wasn’t dementia or space aliens. Although Bomb Pops do look like little rockets.