Grocery Shopping.

I went grocery shopping today, which usually proves to be a frustrating task for me.
It either:
a) annoys me to traipse through the crowd of people who have little regard for others and demonstrate this by blocking the entire isle with their cart and or body.
b) bothers me to spend money on some of the exact things I just bought the week before.
c) is a glaring reminder that I live alone as evidenced by the contents of my cart, which usually contains items such as cereal, milk, veggie burgers, fruit, peanut butter, bread, and salad . All things that can be made into a meal quickly and with little effort. It's not that I don't enjoy cooking, it's just that I don't like to put so much effort into something that is just for me.

As you can see grocery shopping is needless to say a discouraging event for me. On this Sunday evening it was different. I walked into the store to find the construction that has plagued this place for months to be almost done. It looked like a completely new store and made me feel like I was in a different location. Not my average, run of the mill grocery store. The layout is different, there is a sushi stand...which though it may frighten me to try such a delicacy from a super market, it just makes the whole place feel so fancy! I was not even annoyed by the fact that they have changed all the isles. I even had to do a little searching for my normal products. And though I will never understand why cat food and chips are sold in the same isle, this new renovation has brought a sense of hope. My surprisingly delightful trip did not stop there. As I stood in the checkout line to pay, I was a part of an unexpected "community". The check out lines were busy and every time a cashier would push a bag of grapes across the scanner, he would yell out "GRAPES!" and several other store employees would respond by yelling "GRAPES!". I wasn't really sure why, they were doing this, but my very friendly cashier later explained that Grapes are the fruit of the week, so they yell that every time they scan them. I found this endearing. I also was third in line, behind 2 women, both with enough food to feed a small army. As usual I reached for a magazine to distract myself from the wait. As the first woman was paying, she reached back and gave the second woman her customers rewards card to scan so that she could also get the discounts. "How nice is that." I thought. Well the kind behavior did not stop there. A large man dressed in regular clothes came up to the woman in front of me and asked if he could help bag her groceries because the poor cashier was trying to scan and bag quickly, as she stuffed things in bags, but they were barely making a dent in all the items she was buying. The man was still there when it was my turn and he again bagged my groceries and set them in my cart. I'm pretty sure he did not even work there! I left feeling so encouraged...how often do things like that happen? Not enough it seems, but tonight in that grocery store it felt like real community. And may I just say...I Love Nice People.