It's all in what you're used to
Feb. 4th, 2007 10:25 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jaunthieNormally I avoid shopping malls like the plague. I happen to live about a mile away from one, and unfortunately it's one of those yuppie paradises that has very little in the way of practical and/or useful stores. It's got a Barnes and Noble, a Bartell's, a card store, a Radio Shack, a pet food store, and a really big QFC...and that's about it in the way of practical things. (I dearly wish it had a hardware store and a department store, as it did way back in the day.) It's mostly filled with a ton of overpriced fashionable stores and trendy chain restaurants and the like, and it's almost always crawling with wall-to-wall people. Reasons enough to avoid it. I don't need excuses to spend money, and I don't like crowds.
But every so often I do go there, as the pet food store carries the brand of cat food that J can eat when softened with water (most cat food turns into disgusting mush when moistened, but this doesn't; it just softens enough to be easier for him to eat). While![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
fisherbear and I were there running that errand, we decided to kill two birds with one trip and do the grocery shopping at the aforementioned really big QFC.
Funny...I used to shop at that store a lot, back when it was the closest decent mass-market grocery store. I remember missing all the things I could get there, being able to do all my shopping in one trip, when I did stop going there (mostly because of the traffic and the difficulty parking). These days I do almost all of my grocery shopping at the local PCC and Metropolitan Market, and I thought I missed having more variety.
Turns out not only do I not miss all that variety, but I can't really get what I want at that great big QFC, either. I've gotten used to a large organic produce section with (among other things) three different varieties of organically-grown kale to choose from, and a certain brand of organic peanut butter in the bread-and-spreads aisle, and so on. I don't miss having to pass a wall-o-ramen-noodles, particularly when I can't get the variety of broth I am looking for. And I'm used to choosing between two good brands of turkey bacon, neither of which were at the QFC. The store was too big, too hard to find things in, had too few of the items I needed (possibly lost amongst the vast horde of items I had no need for), and far far FAR too crowded.
Either I'm a smarter shopper now than I used to be (which I hope and think might indeed be true), or I'm getting parochial in my old age. Probably a bit of both.
But every so often I do go there, as the pet food store carries the brand of cat food that J can eat when softened with water (most cat food turns into disgusting mush when moistened, but this doesn't; it just softens enough to be easier for him to eat). While
fisherbear and I were there running that errand, we decided to kill two birds with one trip and do the grocery shopping at the aforementioned really big QFC.Funny...I used to shop at that store a lot, back when it was the closest decent mass-market grocery store. I remember missing all the things I could get there, being able to do all my shopping in one trip, when I did stop going there (mostly because of the traffic and the difficulty parking). These days I do almost all of my grocery shopping at the local PCC and Metropolitan Market, and I thought I missed having more variety.
Turns out not only do I not miss all that variety, but I can't really get what I want at that great big QFC, either. I've gotten used to a large organic produce section with (among other things) three different varieties of organically-grown kale to choose from, and a certain brand of organic peanut butter in the bread-and-spreads aisle, and so on. I don't miss having to pass a wall-o-ramen-noodles, particularly when I can't get the variety of broth I am looking for. And I'm used to choosing between two good brands of turkey bacon, neither of which were at the QFC. The store was too big, too hard to find things in, had too few of the items I needed (possibly lost amongst the vast horde of items I had no need for), and far far FAR too crowded.
Either I'm a smarter shopper now than I used to be (which I hope and think might indeed be true), or I'm getting parochial in my old age. Probably a bit of both.
