All Apologies

Somewhere in my young young-adulthood I became an apologizer. So I liked this Op-Ed in the NYTimes today.

Riding on the coattails of that theme, I made my first trip to Trader Joe's in New York today. There are only two words that accurately describe Trader Joe's at Union Square, the statistically most-patronized TJ's of all: Holy Shit.

It is an absolute hive. People are bumping into and squeezing past eachother every 1.5 steps. You move at a snail's pace. It's unbelievable how many people fit into that space, the same size as the Seattle locations (which are not empty either, mind you); I'm sure the maximum occupancy is a liar.



You should not attempt to patronize this store without patience, determination, and a healthy hour to spare. After swimming upstream at a pathetic, near-spawned-out dead fish pace, I realized that there is an ideal formula that consists of obtaining desired items at the center of the store (the delicacy of this matter is important as well, there should be a suggested progression with one-way arrows on the floor), and then acquiring the rest of the list as you snake your way around the outside and advance toward the registers (the line barricades access to all meats and cheeses anyway).

There are three people that orchestrate that 45-minute wait- one at the front to direct you to one of the twenty -something registers, and then two at the end that get the (coveted) position of holding up tall signs that delineate the tail of the two lines (over and under 15 items). On weekends you have to wait outside the store just to get in to shop.

In the monday evening grocery rush, people were somewhat weary but not truly unpleasant. I was surprised at the general "we're all in this together" attitude that trumped any "rude New Yorker" tendencies that may hold true to stereotype. Though there was a bit of gentle pushing and aggressive cart steering (I propose they do away with even the mini-carts) there were more "good grief"s than "get the hell out of my way"s.

However, you are bound to get random atrocities in such a dense, high-intensity situation. I was almost up to the front of the line when I witnessed, two carts in front of me, a couple with a young child get truly mauled by a tiny eighty year-old woman in a Rascal scooter. I'm not exaggerating; the woman gave no warning and came full-boar at the husband, knocking him down from behind and continuing to persevere without apologizing. Was it because he was black? I hope not. He was totally stunned silent and didn't know how to react, but it really pissed off his wife, who could not refrain from walking over there five minutes later to tell her politely how unacceptable it is to do something like that and not apologize. Everyone was kind of stunned at how odd/politically awkward it was to try and grasp whether you should yell at a well-dressed (the woman was wearing a jeweled barette in her freshly-coiffed hair), tiny old lady, and didn't want to hazard a guess whether race had anything to do with it. Whatever it was, it was kind of unsettling and his wife was really bent out of shape.

But hey, it makes for a good story, and I got my vat of hummus and tandoori naan after only a little over an hour.

And the moral of the story: 'member your Ps and Qs, even if you do go bat-shit crazy like that little old lady.