Why I love Safeway Better Than Giant

I went to Giant (large, local, chain grocery store) to buy pasta and marshmallows, because that's a totally normal combination, right? I'm teaching a summer orientation/class, and since tomorrow is Friday and these poor souls have been looking at me for the past four days with that mix of detached amusement and occasional confusion commonly espoused in Zen Buddhism, I figured I'd let them build marshmallow and pasta towers for a teamwork activity. You know, since it's Friday, and it's summer, and they decided to come to school early. I don't know what I was doing the summer before my first semester, but it wasn't going to school early, that's for sure. Maybe plotting ways to go late, which is why I was such a blindingly unsuccessful college freshman.

So in the first place, Giant was out of big marshmallows, which is a total joke. How can you be out of marshmallows of any size, even though they were on sale, when it's not a major holiday? More to the point, when it's not Thanksgiving or Christmas? It's been a thousand degrees here for two months. Who is baking? Who is using them for anything other than craft projects? They should be spilling out into the aisle. But lo, there were no big marshmallows. So I bought a couple bags of the little ones, and briefly wondered what kind of tower one could make with just little ones holding the pasta noodles together.

Rapidly concluding that it would be the shittiest pasta tower in the history of said edifices, I resigned myself to going over to Safeway, although my tiredness was such that one grocery store trip was already more than enough. And besides, our Safeway is not nice. The one I used to live by was lovely, but this one is not, and I'm not even really a grocery store snob. Walking down the aisle where the marshmallows are, I saw the display, and all the little sale cards on them too. "Oh, no," I thought. "There is no way that both of these stores could be out of the big marshmallows." And indeed, I bought what may be the last remaining four bags of them in my county. I'm left to wonder, what is with the stockpiling of these things? Again, not a holiday. Maybe s'mores while camping? Certainly not bonfires.

Checking out was fun, too:
Cashier: (mumbling, as I arrived.) "I gotta handle all this stuff...my insurance, all that shit."

Me: Hello. I hear ya.

C: Yeah, girl. I need...you know, I need a sugar daddy. But I ain't a gold digger.

M: (Struggling not to go all Kanye up in heah) Haha, yeah. Me neither. That's my problem.

C: Yeah? You know how it is.

M: Right, I've started to require a job. And a vehicle.

C: And a house, too, girl! You gotta have a house.

M: Right, good point. I'll keep that in mind.

C: Seriously.

M: Gotta have some standards - otherwise it's better to be alone.

C: You said it. Have a good night.

These are from another Safeway, yesterday. I hadn't taken photos in the grocery for a while - not since I moved from G'town. It seemed an opportune time:

First, a card for "patriotic remembrances." Okay.

This chicken just looks wrong.

I bought this card once and never gave it to the person I bought it for. Then I thought it was wryly funny. Now I'm really sort of glad I didn't give it out.

(nb: the inside says something to the effect of "I don' know about puppets. People might not be ready for puppets." In the moment it seemed really cute. Hm.)

Also, side note at the grocery: anything called a "loaf cake" cannot also be "light".

Comments

[Elspeth]

I always preferred Giant until they were bought out, and since we don't have Giant in CA, Safeway is the best choice here. I worked at Giant too and only lasted a month!

P.S. I think the marshmallow problem was due to thousands of cookouts in the summer.

[Killer B]

Safeways in central Indiana, where I'm from, are only in neighborhoods we probably don't visit anyway. Glad they don't all suck.