Two things you should know about me, as background for what happened at Carrefour today.
1. Sometimes I buy ice cream here, even though it's either of horrible quality or really expensive. And I usually go for the expensive stuff. I laugh at/pine for the days when I could wait for 1.5 quarts of Breyer's to go on sale for $2 and that was something that actually happened. Here, the exact same size of ice cream, except more freezer-burny from multiple thawings and chillings, is 30 dhs ($8). But I only eat ice cream once a week. Well, let me rephrase that: I only eat ice cream during one 24-hour period a week. My point: sometimes I buy ice cream, and it's a big deal when I do because it costs so much.
2. I am socially awkward. At the grocery store, I cringe whenever I feel like someone is looking at what I'm buying, even if it's just fruits and vegetables and bread. I just don't want anyone to judge my grocery shopping decisions. I hate laying it out for the cashier to see, too, but that's a necessary evil. There are certain things I am STILL, at the ripe old age of 30, embarrassed to buy. Even when I need something mundane (like toothpaste) at the store, and I end up at that part of the aisle, and someone is standing in front of the area I need to peruse, I will walk on and not buy that thing, rather than draw attention to myself and the fact that I also need to buy that thing by standing there and waiting for the person to move. It's like this:
I understand this penguin completely.
So today at Carrefour, I made a covert foray into the ice cream section. There were two official-ish ladies hanging out there but they were far enough away from my cart that I didn't feel in danger of their judgment of my shopping cart contents. However, they were really paying attention to how I was assessing my various ice cream choices. It bothered me. I pulled an item out of the freezer to get a closer look, and I could feel their eyes on me. I felt so self-conscious and socially awkward that I decided to just put the ice cream in my cart and get out of there.
However, as soon as I turned my cart out of the aisle, the ladies swooped in on me and asked if they could administer a survey. I didn't have the heart to say no, and then I was subjected to five minutes of tortuous questions about my shopping preferences, particularly as they related to ice cream. IT WAS SO AWKWARD. For me, not for them. It was as if someone had designed a social experiment just for Socially Awkward Bridget. And they won. And now I have some random ice cream sitting in my freezer and I might cringe all over again when I eat it on Friday. Sigh.
1. Sometimes I buy ice cream here, even though it's either of horrible quality or really expensive. And I usually go for the expensive stuff. I laugh at/pine for the days when I could wait for 1.5 quarts of Breyer's to go on sale for $2 and that was something that actually happened. Here, the exact same size of ice cream, except more freezer-burny from multiple thawings and chillings, is 30 dhs ($8). But I only eat ice cream once a week. Well, let me rephrase that: I only eat ice cream during one 24-hour period a week. My point: sometimes I buy ice cream, and it's a big deal when I do because it costs so much.
2. I am socially awkward. At the grocery store, I cringe whenever I feel like someone is looking at what I'm buying, even if it's just fruits and vegetables and bread. I just don't want anyone to judge my grocery shopping decisions. I hate laying it out for the cashier to see, too, but that's a necessary evil. There are certain things I am STILL, at the ripe old age of 30, embarrassed to buy. Even when I need something mundane (like toothpaste) at the store, and I end up at that part of the aisle, and someone is standing in front of the area I need to peruse, I will walk on and not buy that thing, rather than draw attention to myself and the fact that I also need to buy that thing by standing there and waiting for the person to move. It's like this:
I understand this penguin completely.
So today at Carrefour, I made a covert foray into the ice cream section. There were two official-ish ladies hanging out there but they were far enough away from my cart that I didn't feel in danger of their judgment of my shopping cart contents. However, they were really paying attention to how I was assessing my various ice cream choices. It bothered me. I pulled an item out of the freezer to get a closer look, and I could feel their eyes on me. I felt so self-conscious and socially awkward that I decided to just put the ice cream in my cart and get out of there.
However, as soon as I turned my cart out of the aisle, the ladies swooped in on me and asked if they could administer a survey. I didn't have the heart to say no, and then I was subjected to five minutes of tortuous questions about my shopping preferences, particularly as they related to ice cream. IT WAS SO AWKWARD. For me, not for them. It was as if someone had designed a social experiment just for Socially Awkward Bridget. And they won. And now I have some random ice cream sitting in my freezer and I might cringe all over again when I eat it on Friday. Sigh.