dribble it! pass it! we want a basket!

i am a fan of trying new things, so today i decided to go to the harris teeter instead of the publix. hey, i didn't say it was a big new thing, just that it was a new thing. i've been to "a" harris teeter before but never to this one. i thought this was supposed to be a fancyish type of grocery on the high end of town. turns out, not so much on either count. the high end of town is a bit down at the heels and HT is not a fancyish type of grocery. it's dimly lit with low ceilings and not particularly clean. publix is brightly lit with soaring ceilings and is sparkling clean. now, i don't think it's fair to criticize a grocery i don't frequent for being poorly organized because so much of the value of organization is simply whatever you're used to, but having said that, i wonder about the value of putting peanut butter and jelly on a small shelf behind the special seasonal items. seems an odd choice, to me.

so i went to the deli and asked for "black forest smoked turkey" and i pointed to it. the deli lady picked up the wrong thing and she was fixing to slice it and i asked, pointing again, "is that the one here, that's on sale?" she said, "you want the one that's on sale?" no, lady, i'm just taking roll. YES I WANT THE ONE THAT I ASKED FOR. sheesh. so i go, "yes." and she goes, "black forest smoked turkey?" and i go, "yes." (again) and she picked up something i couldn't see and sliced it and piled it into a bag and handed it to me. i perused the selection and it was either completely rancid turkey, or it was ham. great fancy cold cuts! can she not get this right?! i by this time completely out of patience up and also feeling a bit lost in the strange foreign grocery whilst simultaneously fielding a phoned-in venting from mini-me who is having stress and all, and so i am thinking i need to just simply put down the ham and leave the harris teeter.



but, ham's not the sort of thing you can tuck in there beside the boxed cereals. i mean, i wanted to return it, not start a pandemic of rotted-meat-borne disease. so i went to the service desk and briefly explained what happened and was fixing to walk away but the manager lady was like waitwait, and she got the deli manager who immediately asked for the opportunity to make it right pleaseplease. so i was like FINE OKAY and she went get the pound of turkey and i went to get the grapes, bananas, bread, and milk.

i thought it might be fun to sort of shop around and see what they had to offer. perhaps some gourmet goodies? quite the disappointment. they had more junque on display than at the dollar general. stuffed animals. christmas wrap. plastic dishes. sparkly spiral notebooks. a big box of closeout pre-rented DVDs from the defunct hollywood video. egad.



all this surrounded by your basic regular normal oatmeal and pork chops, plastered every few feet with annoying "2 FOR 2.99 WITH YOUR VIC CARD" malarky signs. publix doesn't have a discount card, therefore they don't have those signs. it's the sort of thing you become immune to, i suppose, but good grief, they are incessant. so you either tune them out or are completely torn apart with annoyance. now, that's some good marketing!

took my meager selections to the check out where i had to sign up for the VIC card because by golly i was NOT gonna miss out on THOSE savings. by the time my items were totalled and then VIC'd and then the manager removed the turkey cost from the ticket despite my telling her that i had not paid for the ham, after all that the total was just over $13 which is a small price to pay for adventure.

but then, it was a small adventure.