I'm Sorry For Who I Become At The Grocery Store

On maximum efficiency and unsuccessfully seeking validation in the self checkout lane.

Nowhere is my particular brand of neurodivergence more obvious than when I’m at the grocery store.

I make detailed lists based on meal planning for the week, structured for maximum store-navigating efficiency. I dutifully pack my reusable bags. I mentally prepare in the car with some lo-fi beats. I visualize my path through the store based on what type of trip it is (full week of groceries or, my personal favorite, a trip where I only need like six random things from different parts of the store). I exit my car and immediately channel the energy from the Nickelodeon Super Toy Run shopping sprees that aired during commercials in the 90s. I scowl at men who get in my way.

I know the Fred Meyer store near my house inside and out. I am a woman on a mission, and that mission is to get in and out of the store as fast as I can while making everyone around me think “wow she is a fast shopper,” even though I guarantee not one person has ever thought this when witnessing me shopping. What they are actually probably thinking is “someone get that woman a CBD gummy.” 

I pride myself in not making decisions in the produce aisle—I simply spot my targets from afar and grab the first item I touch, not even breaking pace. I then blaze out of produce, grab a loaf of bread from the deli, speed to the meat section for two packs of chicken breasts, come in hot around the corner to dairy and treat the aisle sections like the last six laps of the Daytona 500. By now my heart rate is 105, and I can feel my blood pressure creeping steadily higher. I find that a soft, well-mannered “let me just sneak past you,” is a quick ticket by all the elderly women making decisions in the english muffin and baking aisles, a dramatic juxtaposition as I try to move at a running pace while not looking like I’m running.

When the shopping is done, we get to where I really shine—self checkout.

There’s always a line at self checkout, and I always have a good amount of items, so being as fast as possible has become a complex of mine to prove to the people behind me in line that not only have I perceived their ire, but I also take it very seriously. Mere minutes ago I was scowling at someone who had the audacity to be looking for the same item I was looking for—or, even worse, who parked their shopping cart perpendicular to the flow of traffic—but when it comes to self checkout, I am nothing but a people pleaser, desperately seeking the unlikely approval from the strangers behind me in line.

(Note: I understand that no one is ever going to walk up to me and say “wow you’re the fastest person I’ve ever seen go through self checkout.” But dammit if I don’t try.)

I open my three bags (the perfect amount for my weekly shopping trip, I’ve established) and start scanning as fast as the scanner will allow between annoying notifications: “Please scan item before placing in bagging area”; “Each item must be placed in the bagging area”; or the absolute worst, “please wait, help is on the way.” Help, I’ve learned, is never on the way.

Once scanning and bagging is complete, I go through the on-screen self checkout process like a woman scorned—scanning my shopper’s card before it even has a chance to ask, watching as the discounts pour off my order total before proudly clicking “0” when it asks how many bags I need to purchase. I swipe my credit card before clicking the “card” option, which circumvents the need to inefficiently spend .3 seconds clicking yet another button on-screen. From there it’s: receipt, bags, power walk across the parking lot, unlock car, load groceries, get into driver’s seat and begin my transformation from “grocery store mode,” back to normal mode.

I would like to note that the fastest I’ve gotten in and out of the store for a full week of normal grocery shopping is 22 minutes—please clap (like actually…I desperately need the external validation since the people behind me in the self checkout line continue to not give it to me).

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If going to the grocery store is a game—which I hope I have made clear that it is, to me—then the Bellingham, Washington Trader Joe’s is the final level, the proverbial Bowser in my grocery shopping Super Mario World; and Trader Joe’s in the days before Thanksgiving is something beyond that entirely. 

This game, unlike at my normal and much less chaotic grocery store, starts in the parking lot. Will you find parking and also avoid having to make an insurance claim later? Will the stream of people in the crosswalk be through fast enough for me to beat that Prius to that spot I see opening up two rows down? Of course the lady who just cut me off has a British Columbia license plate.

Conditions only deteriorate the more interior you get. Outside, everyone is milling about waiting for a cart at the mouth of the one and only cart corral. I avoid this obvious time suck and opt for a basket, which I intrinsically accept will weigh 40 pounds and cut off circulation to my hand by the time I’m done.

People like to loiter at Trader Joe’s, which is fine on any normal Monday morning but I think it’s safe to say that it’s not as socially accepted at 5 pm on a Friday or 2 pm on a Saturday or anytime in the week before Thanksgiving. Sorry to say, but if you’ve never been to Trader Joe’s, the above times are not for you—they are for the seasoned veterans, the battle-hardened among us.

This being said, I’m still mostly amenable to the older women who tend to be moving slow and gawking at all of the seasonal hits. I’m much less amenable to the guys who move with no purpose and who always tend to have a scared, vulnerable look in their eye, like their wives sent them here with zero preparation or coaching, much less an actual list. The implicit Trader Joe’s Code of Peak Hours Etiquette has no obvious bearing on their behavior. I’m sorry to gatekeep a grocery store like this, but TJ’s before Thanksgiving is not where you belong if you’re untrained in the ways of efficient grocery store navigation; you need to come on a couple random Tuesday mornings and get acquainted with the locations of the items that you regularly purchase before putting yourself in the arena like this.

As someone who grew up four hours from the nearest Trader Joe’s and didn’t step foot inside one until I was 28 years old, I was once where these folks were, so I do have sympathy for their lack of proficiency. One day they, too, will be savvy shoppers, hell bent on efficiency. One day they, too, will have that crazed look in their eye as they navigate the freezer section looking for spinach and ricotta ravioli. One day they, too, will freak out strangers while trying to get the Fastest Known Time through Fred Meyers.

Or perhaps their own final shopping form will just be normal and relaxed, going about their list not as if it were a new level to beat but simply a task to be completed at whatever pace it requires. I wouldn’t understand that—I’m too busy finding the fastest route between the dairy section and the soup aisle.