You would think I enjoy grocery shopping especially during off-peak hours. The pleasant, upbeat music. The brightly-lit aisles. The rush of cool air in the frozen section. Particularly on a Saturday night, you can sense some serenity while strolling through the open space of a warehouse-like-store, feeling no rush to find an exit.
You also would think pop culture, through the decades, would influence men such as myself with Hollywood’s longstanding cinematic imagery of romantic, if not lustful, close encounters among the fruits and vegetables. Mist floats from above, eyes meet and hands linger on suggestively-shaped fruit.
However, even before COVID-19, I dreaded grocery shopping unless it involved Costco. To me, grocery shopping feels tedious, the equivalent of entering a labyrinth of choices that I can’t seem to navigate very well. I even dreaded my wife, Loren, traveling to the supermarket, which she considers more like a trip to the spa with self-care offering itself on the shelves. Particularly on weekends, I preferred to spend time with her at home or elsewhere instead of wasting time apart while she strolled around the store.
On the flip side, I appreciate grocery delivery, and even persuaded Loren to try it. The concept seems more efficient and provides me an opportunity to tool around with an app. However, personal shoppers continuously foiled my plans by picking fruit Loren would have left behind.
COVID-19 changed this. Based on the frequency of texts we receive, those personal shoppers are our new best friends. Twice a week, the doorbell rings, the dogs bark frantically and products land on our front patio. However, Loren is raising questions about the sex, as in the gender of the personal shoppers.
“The women ask a ton of questions,” Loren told me about the personal grocery shoppers who are women. “The men just make decisions. I hate to say it, but I’m not thrilled with a lot of the decisions the men make.”
She is talking about the replacements that personal grocery shoppers select when the items we order are not available. For example, we ordered Breyers chocolate ice cream, which wasn’t available. Instead of choosing another brand of chocolate ice cream, the man shopping for us stuck with Breyers and bought us a chocolate, vanilla, strawberry combination ice cream. In this situation, we didn’t have an opportunity to approve or disapprove of his choice. We simply knew he chose a replacement.
“I thought, OK, maybe he just got another chocolate ice cream, which is a logical thing to do,” Loren told me.
“No one’s going to eat that,” she added about the chocolate, vanilla, strawberry mash-up.
“They’re just more detailed,” Loren told me about the women shopping for groceries for delivery. “They’ll send photos. They’ll say they’re out of this product and ask, ‘Which of these items on this shelf do you like?’ Sometimes they’ll just go ahead and choose a replacement and usually they are suitable. I’ve had the men usually just choose the replacements without consulting and a lot of time those replacements are just way off like the chocolate ice cream. Just get another brand. It just didn’t make sense to me. That ice cream flavor is just so random that he got. Would you eat that?”
I wouldn’t.
When I’ve complained about grocery shopping in the past, several men told me they actually enjoy it. Has Loren engaged in a passionate, sexist rant or has she identified a communications issue within the supermarket industry? This reminds me of media training I once provided for the leader of an organization. During a practice interview, he highlighted the organization’s efforts to place more women in leadership positions, then arguing that women often display stronger communications skills. His public information officer and two other media trainers in the room swiftly told him he shouldn’t describe or single out women as better communicators.
I don’t know what to believe about the masked men and women shopping for us while COVID-19 persuades some of us to remain home. I certainly appreciate their efforts and bravery. However, if I were to outline one of those Top 10 tips for better public relations, I would start with this: If someone orders chocolate, for goodness sakes, stick with chocolate.
