Rant #2,376: Shoppin' From A To Z

My sister told my mother the other day that she went to her local Target, and was not only able to shop for groceries, but was able to get other non-food items because "the whole store was open."

I could not believe this, since in New York, all stores that were thought to be non-essential were shut down due to the coronavirus pandemic. That means that your local supermarket was open, but your local Kohl's was not.

Target falls into a different category altogether, because while they do have a relatively expansive food section, two-thirds of their space is devoted to clothing, furniture, sporting goods and other items thought to be non-essential during this period.

So in my mind, I figured that they would have their grocery portion open, but the other two-thirds of the store featuring non-essential items would be roped off at the current time.

How wrong I was!

I figured I would go over to our local Target to get a few food-related items that we needed, and to kill two birds with one stone, fill up my car with gas at the station that is right next door to the shopping center where Target is. So I drove to the store, thinking that my time there would be devoted to the essentials.

But when I got there, I saw people walking out of the front of the store with both essential and non-essential items. I grabbed a cart, walked in myself, and I saw that the entire store was open!

Yes, not only can shoppers get food and other necessary items, but ladies, if you wanted to buy a new outfit, or guys, if you wanted to buy a new set of golf clubs, you could do so, right in the middle of a pandemic!

This is kind of troubling, at least to me.

Target is kind of skirting the issue of closure because many of their stores are hybrid venues, where they have a grocery portion and a department store portion. Under the edict of the governor, most stores are shuttered because they are thought to be non-essential during this time period.

But here you have Target, selling both essential and non-essential items during a pandemic--and remember, tow-thirds of their store is devoted to department store items.

I don't know, it doesn't seem quite right to me.

So, being the shopping hypocrite that I am, I took advantage of the situation by not only picking up my essential items, but I also bought two heavy plastic files to store my 45 RPM singles in my ongoing project to fix up my daughter's old bedroom. With those two new additions, I can take my records out of an old dresser, put them in these new receptacles, and move the old dresser out of the room, which would free up space for another structure to hold LPs that now reside on the floor of the room.

So I put everything into my cart, and then I came across a woman, who had at least 10 years on me, in one of the aisles.

"Can you get that toilet paper for me off the top of the shelf," the somewhat height-challenged women asked me, referring to a package of about 20 rolls of toilet paper that was hanging out almost by its lonesome on the top shelf of one of the store's aisles.

"Sure," I said, and dutifully got her the rolls and placed them in her cart.

"Oh, do they have a limit here?" she asked. "I see another one. Could you please get that for me?"

Yes, there was the original package's twin a little further down on the top shelf in the aisle, and again, I dutifully and once again got her what she wanted, and put it in her cart for her.

Yes, the woman now had 40 rolls of toilet paper, and since I did not want to start an argument about hoarding--those were the only two bigger packages left in the entire store, she had them in her cart due to my effort--I began to walk away, shaking my head and thinking that this woman is an idiot.

And as I walked away, I saw that a man came from another aisle around the bend and met with her. I guess he was her husband, who was shopping up another aisle, and he had about five inches on me in height.

She couldn't wait for him to satisfy her hoarder sickness?

Yes, I guess I got used, so who's the idiot now?

After shaking my head so much that my neck hurt, I brought my cart up to the only aisle peopled by a human being in the store. I put my items on the roller to be scanned, and the cashier asked me if I wanted the smaller items bagged.

"Not if you are going to charge me five cents per bag," I replied, alluding to the governor's edict that stores had to charge five cents per plastic bag and could charge what they wanted for paper bags in New York State stores.

"No, they're free," he told me, and I gave him the OK to bag the smaller groceries.

I have noticed that some stores, including Shoprite, are skirting the issue of charging for bags until the ban on plastic bags--and the surcharge of five cents if you insist on them--is put in place tomorrow on April 1. Vinyl bags are an annoyance to begin with, but unless cleaned--something that most people do not do--they can be carriers of germs and other nasty stuff.

So in the pandemic, some stores are kind of skirting the issue of issuing their own plastic and paper bags for free, and Target is one of them. Based on my shopping experience yesterday, I don't have to wonder why.

I paid for my purchase using my debit card--preferable to germ-filled cash, which my bank teller wife handles every day at work--and after putting everything in my car, I went to the nearby gas station, where gas had gone below the $2 level because of lack of use or need by people staying put in their homes.

I filled up, again using my debit card, and when I was done, I used hand sanitizer to make sure I didn't pick up anything from the pump--another supposed source of contagions.

I then drove home--wondering why, even though I made my purchases and got pretty much what I wanted, and more--I had felt the need to go out in the first place.