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Try as I might to avoid the virtues of sharing the experience, sometimes I get stuck accompanying my significant other to the grocery store. Here, that pretty much means Safeway.
Salida does boast a new Wal-Mart Superstore that opened last fall out on the road to Gunnison. Before that store opened, if I needed a gallon of milk, I could go to the old Wal-Mart, which was within a mile, Gibson's, Downtown Grocery or Safeway.
Growth is supposed to bring convenience, but something must be perverse about Salida. Here, growth meant that Gibson's and Downtown Grocery closed their doors, and after Wal-Mart migrated, it sits three miles away.
Not that I have anything against Safeway. It's a union shop and the staff is friendly. It's just that they have this thing called the Safeway Club.
Join the Safeway Club and you get a card with a magnetic stripe and a bar code. Throughout the store are signs offering substantial discounts to club members. When you go to the checkstand and present your card, you get the discounts.
I asked a friend who works there about the cards.
There's been a big push to get every shopper to sign up
for the cards,
he said, adding nothing to my knowledge.
For at least a month, it had been impossible to walk down
an aisle without getting hustled for the card.
What do they use the cards for? I asked.
They didn't tell us that,
he said, but I'm
pretty sure they use the card to keep track of your buying
patterns, so that we can serve you better in the future,
that sort of thing.
I have nothing against getting served better, now or in the future, but it inspired some dark thoughts. Someday I might have to get a job -- the millennium is approaching, after all -- which would mean an interview.
Mr. Quillen, I see here that you asked that this
interview be postponed because you were ill on
Monday.
I nod.
But I see here that on Sunday afternoon, you went to
Safeway and purchased four liters of tonic water, 20 pounds
of ice, six cans of tomato juice, two pounds of limes --
looks to me like you were having a party that night, and
you were too hungover to come in for the scheduled
interview on Monday.
Well, it does look that way, I concede, but one shouldn't judge by appearances.
The interviewer moves on down his list. You said
your health was generally good, but I notice that in May
and June of each year, you frequently purchase sinus
medications. Don't you think we should know about your hay
fever?
But that just bothers me when I'm outdoors, I explain, and I seem to be immune to ozone from laser printers, most varieties of paper dust, computer network rage and other indoor white-collar work-related hazards.
Well, we'll have to see about that. I see that you
purchase cans of Bugler tobacco every fortnight or so.
Does this mean you're trying to evade the increased taxes
proposed for factory-rolled cigarettes? We wouldn't want
any trouble from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco &
Firearms.
It just means I'm a cheapskate, I explain.
For both our sakes, I wish that you were telling the
truth here, Mr. Quillen. But I notice that, even though
fresh fruits and vegetables are cheaper and more
nutritious, you often purchase salt- and fat-laden foods,
such as potato chips and cheese. Would you care to
explain?
It's just a matter of taste, I say.
You have strange tastes, Mr. Quillen.
Salt-and-vinegar potato chips? No purchases of chocolate
for more than a year, when there are women in your
household? And I see that you go through several large
cans of store-brand coffee each month.
I protest that I believe coffee is an acceptable addiction these days.
But pre-ground store brand? Instead of buying beans
from different locales and grinding and mixing your own
designer blend? That's tacky, really tacky, Mr. Quillen,
and it shows me that you just don't have what it takes to
be a player on our world-class team.
Granted, that's just a dark fantasy. I'm sure that if I asked, I'd be told that our privacy will be protected in all these purchase records that accumulate in some mainframe computer at Safeway headquarters.
But then again, there's Kenneth Starr, the special prosecutor who subpoenas everything. And the increasing nosiness of American society. And a personal belief in privacy.
This I felt as though I had compromised myself when I succumbed to my cheapskate tendencies and got a Safeway Club Card. To assuage my guilt, I'm hoping for one of those Y2K computer crashes.
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