Chudway

Last weekend, we went to our friend's (Dani and Greg - shout out!) house for a practice day for our trip to Mexico.  (which means, eat Mexican food).  We received a call in transit from Dani that there were no ripe avocados at their Safeway - so we had to make a pit-stop to grab some.

The closest Safeway was Millbourne Market Mall, deep in the heart of Millwoods.  If you have never been there, I really don't suggest it - it has to be one of the chuddiest Safeways I've been to in a while.  (and don't get me started on the rest of the mall - it's like a worse version of Capilano mall, if you can believe that!)

Anyway - going to that Safeway is like a trip back in time.  It's like this store was passed over when Safeway did their store upgrades a few years ago.  Instead of fancy flooring, organized isles, self-checkouts, etc... you get:

1. Wide lanes.  I think it's because they have this huge store, but not much stock.  It's like that Seinfeld episode:
   
   
   
2. Old-school style round checkouts:  You know the ones - instead of a conveyer belt, it's a turn-table kind of dealy that endlessly rotates.  It's not like they needed to save the space in the store that those conveyer belts take up (see #1).  Maybe their clerks are erstwhile DJs or something.
3. Old-school style freezers.  Yes - instead of the stand-up freezers with doors that hold a ton of food, you get the floor-level, top-loading big bulk bins of coldness.  These take up a lot of room (see #1).
4. A whole lot of dead space.  The front of the store has no Starbucks, no video renting machine (and P.S. who buys DVDs from a vending machine at Safeway)?  Just a bunch of old linoleum in that 1970s Safeway style.  The store kindof looks like a 10-page report that you wrote, but did it treble-spaced with huge margins, so there's really only 2 pages of content.
5. A produce selection that rivals communist Russia.  I almost wanted to put on a big furry hat and line up with some vouchers for my monthly lettuce allotment.

So, the next time you're sipping your java-chip frappucino whilst checking out your own groceries, remember the early 80s and how much of a nasty chore grocery shopping used to be.

Or still is, if you have to take your kids along - right Kathryn?