Oh Trader Joe

I was on “frozen goods” for an hour. All I had to do was stuff as many bags as possible into the divided spaces in the freezer. But this time, as I was cutting down a half-empty box of shrimp gyozas with my dinky box cutter, I heard a voice calling in the distance.

“Hello?”

On the busy Sunday it was, I didn't know who, what, or where this voice was calling from. 

“Hello?” an old lady said again. I turned around quickly and was faced with an annoyed customer.

“Oh yes?” I said back as nicely as possible so it didn’t seem I was ignoring her.

“Do you know where my shopping cart went?” she asked and, dare I say, a little rudely.

Out of the thousands of questions I’ve been asked while I'm working, many of them being a little stupid despite the saying “there is no such thing as a stupid question,” this lady’s question was by far the hardest, and, in the nicest way possible, one of the most stupid questions I’ve been asked. Unlike the question, “Where's the berries?” or “Where's the bathroom?” or even “Do you have dried Porcini mushrooms?” (What even is that?), “Where is my cart?” left me dumbfounded.

“I'm sorry?” I responded, not knowing what step I should take next.

I wondered if I should make an announcement over an imaginary loudspeaker in the store to let everyone know, ‘Please! Everyone! Stop what you're doing and tell me where this lady's cart is!” But no, we don’t have loudspeakers for a reason! Instead, we just have our mysterious bell system that wakes the customers back into reality.

Anyways, I quickly came back into reality once the lady continued her questioning,

“My cart is gone. I left it right here and just went to the restroom,” she said as she pointed to the general area of “near the dips.”

“Umm, I’m not sure. Do you remember what was in it?” I said, trying to figure out how to figure out this lady’s problem. But, in my head, I truly didn’t know what I could do to help this lady. It almost felt like I had turned into the stupid one this time, as I pretended to look around at the nearby shopping carts, acting as if I knew what I was looking for.

“Yeah, I just had a gallon of milk in it. I think someone must have taken it. I don't know where it is,” she said back.

At this point, I felt helpless. I thought, “well if it’s just a gallon of milk, just go get another cart if you can’t find your first one.” But then I remembered, “the customer is always right,” so I continued looking, almost convinced that maybe she was right, maybe there truly was a shopping cart snatcher in our store.

“Are you sure you left it here?” I asked. 

“Yes, I left it right here. I just went to the restroom.” At this point, I was stuck, so I decided to take this problem to another side of the store, because she must’ve lost a bit of her memory in the bathroom.

“Why don't we go look over here? Maybe it got moved?” I said, and walked with her in the opposite direction, near the dry produce.

Almost the second we got there, she exclaimed, “Oh! Here, ha ha, I don't know how it got over here!” as she grabbed her shopping cart with a singular gallon of milk that was in fact not near the bathroom and instead about 50 feet in the opposite direction. 

Now this interaction was… something … and, well, it really caught me off guard. But it made me realize: customers at Trader Joe's will quite literally ask anything. Sometimes, I wonder if the brain is turned off once we enter a grocery store and walk around, being guided by food. 

Like the shopping cart dilemma, there's always the classic “where is (blank)?” question.

You see, I think there’s a specific type of customer when it comes to grocery shopping. They know what they want, precisely what they want. They won’t settle for any less. 

“Do you have any more organic broccoli left?”

”I'm sorry we don’t, but we have conventional right here, or we have organic broccoli florets over here,”

“Ummm, no, that’s ok”

I wonder if there is a difference in taste. IDK, maybe they just want to feel healthier and feel good that they aren’t consuming any possible pesticides on their side of broccoli with our frozen pepperoni pizza, mac–and-cheese bowl.

Sometimes, there will be people who are on a mission. I’ll be in the wet produce section, and someone will ask me where the chips are. It’s almost like I have to look around for myself. Am I near chips? Is wet produce suddenly connected to chips in some way that I never knew? And you see, the wet produce wall is right there when you walk in, maybe 20 steps in, so I look at the person and will, of course, still politely lead them to the chips that are obviously not where the salad kits would be, while thinking of how urgent these chips must be for them to walk straight to a worker at 7 p.m. to find the unknown place where the chips must be. 

If there's one thing that these types of questions have taught me, it’s that I can keep my cool! I can be the most polite person in the world if I have to. And, no matter what, even if someone were to say, “How does a grocery store run out of eggs?” and then slap me in the face, I would say, “Thank you! You're right, and I am so, so sorry!”