Supermarket traumas
Supermarkets in the Netherlands are designed to make you feel like an idiot. Yes its true. They are specifically arranged to make things as easy as possible for the cashiers, even giving them a comfortable seat so they have front-row tickets to the sight of your various troubles.
The first time I went I happily strolled the aisles with my trolley, throwing in all those just-moved-in essentials. Washing up liquid, shampoo, laundry powder, tissues.... coffee. The pile in the bottom of the trolley didn't look all that big, not compared to the mammoth supermarket expeditions I have at home. Yet the pile continued to grow.
Having shopped in britain I was prepared for the worst. I knew about how the cashiers sit and watch smugly while you pack your own shopping bags, whizzing things down the conveyer belt towards you so you have to do a kind of Tassie devil impression; becoming a blur of movement in order to get everything packed in the bag as it comes hurtling towards you. So I was prepared for the worst.
I took up my station at the outlet where the goods come shooting down the ramp. But as the first things slid towards me I realised something.... Panic! There were no bags. The cashier was paying no attention to my plight, beeping things over the scanner. "Pardon, pardon. Heeft u bagages?" (In retrospect I think this translates something like "Have you got any luggage?" but this was the least of my concerns at the time.) She looked at me and held up a cardboard roll with one tatter of plastic hanging off it, and then shrugged to indicate how supremely unmoved she was by my plight. (I later found out that they do in fact have plastic bags for purchase, but she was holding out on me... and couldn't be bothered to ask the next cashier along for some). I watched horror stricken as my pile of goods mounted at the end of the conveyerbelt like a malign tower of Babel, and started to spill over the edges. At a loss for what to do I started to pack them back into the trolley from whence they came.
Relief came in the unexpected form of a cardboard box. So with a backbreakingly heavy backpack, a box balanced on my hip like an African woman with a baby, and a 12 pack of heineken dangling from my one remaining pinky finger I managed to catch the bus home and stagger to my apartment. I damaged muscles I didn't even know I had.
My next sortie to the supermarket I came prepared, with three heavy duty plastic bags under my arm. No one was going to make a fool of me this time. Still bicycle-less, I had resolved also not to buy so many heavy things. So I joined the queue much more confident, fixing the cashier with a steely gaze. When it came to my head of broccoli, she held it up and said "goobledee goobledee goobledee gook?". "Sorry?" I said. She sighed at this stupid foreigner. "You haven't put a label on it."
Label? What sort of label? "This is broccoli"? "This is Madeleine's broccoli"?.
"Sorry?"
"You have to weigh it. There is a machine behind you."
The queue was mounting up behind me with impatient Dutch people, so I sprinted to the machine, and somehow spotted the icon for broccoli amongt about 40 others. It weighed it and specified 60 euro cents. I sprinted back to report this to her.
"No, you have to print out the label."
I looked at the machine, at the queue behind me, and then back at her. My face must have said "please, rescue me", because eventually she sighed and got up from her seat to do it myself. I grovelled.... thankyou, yes, I promise I will never do it again. Washing her hands of e, she moved the slider across the outlet ramp ( a clever device that channels the next persons groceries in the other direction, whilst squashing your just-purchase bread and fruit to a pulp). Humbled once again, I retreated from the store with my two (still heavy) bags of groceries.
But my troubles did not end after these two traumatising incidents. There were also the fun occasions of my credit card not working. Not to mention trying to explain to a slack-faced supermarket employee exactly what beef stock was and what it perhaps might be in dutch, "for soup? for risotto? Its like a mix. Nonono, not chilli con carne mix."
And also the time I bought face moisturiser only to discover that it was exfoliant.
The first time I went I happily strolled the aisles with my trolley, throwing in all those just-moved-in essentials. Washing up liquid, shampoo, laundry powder, tissues.... coffee. The pile in the bottom of the trolley didn't look all that big, not compared to the mammoth supermarket expeditions I have at home. Yet the pile continued to grow.
Having shopped in britain I was prepared for the worst. I knew about how the cashiers sit and watch smugly while you pack your own shopping bags, whizzing things down the conveyer belt towards you so you have to do a kind of Tassie devil impression; becoming a blur of movement in order to get everything packed in the bag as it comes hurtling towards you. So I was prepared for the worst.
I took up my station at the outlet where the goods come shooting down the ramp. But as the first things slid towards me I realised something.... Panic! There were no bags. The cashier was paying no attention to my plight, beeping things over the scanner. "Pardon, pardon. Heeft u bagages?" (In retrospect I think this translates something like "Have you got any luggage?" but this was the least of my concerns at the time.) She looked at me and held up a cardboard roll with one tatter of plastic hanging off it, and then shrugged to indicate how supremely unmoved she was by my plight. (I later found out that they do in fact have plastic bags for purchase, but she was holding out on me... and couldn't be bothered to ask the next cashier along for some). I watched horror stricken as my pile of goods mounted at the end of the conveyerbelt like a malign tower of Babel, and started to spill over the edges. At a loss for what to do I started to pack them back into the trolley from whence they came.
Relief came in the unexpected form of a cardboard box. So with a backbreakingly heavy backpack, a box balanced on my hip like an African woman with a baby, and a 12 pack of heineken dangling from my one remaining pinky finger I managed to catch the bus home and stagger to my apartment. I damaged muscles I didn't even know I had.
My next sortie to the supermarket I came prepared, with three heavy duty plastic bags under my arm. No one was going to make a fool of me this time. Still bicycle-less, I had resolved also not to buy so many heavy things. So I joined the queue much more confident, fixing the cashier with a steely gaze. When it came to my head of broccoli, she held it up and said "goobledee goobledee goobledee gook?". "Sorry?" I said. She sighed at this stupid foreigner. "You haven't put a label on it."
Label? What sort of label? "This is broccoli"? "This is Madeleine's broccoli"?.
"Sorry?"
"You have to weigh it. There is a machine behind you."
The queue was mounting up behind me with impatient Dutch people, so I sprinted to the machine, and somehow spotted the icon for broccoli amongt about 40 others. It weighed it and specified 60 euro cents. I sprinted back to report this to her.
"No, you have to print out the label."
I looked at the machine, at the queue behind me, and then back at her. My face must have said "please, rescue me", because eventually she sighed and got up from her seat to do it myself. I grovelled.... thankyou, yes, I promise I will never do it again. Washing her hands of e, she moved the slider across the outlet ramp ( a clever device that channels the next persons groceries in the other direction, whilst squashing your just-purchase bread and fruit to a pulp). Humbled once again, I retreated from the store with my two (still heavy) bags of groceries.
But my troubles did not end after these two traumatising incidents. There were also the fun occasions of my credit card not working. Not to mention trying to explain to a slack-faced supermarket employee exactly what beef stock was and what it perhaps might be in dutch, "for soup? for risotto? Its like a mix. Nonono, not chilli con carne mix."
And also the time I bought face moisturiser only to discover that it was exfoliant.
posted by Girl with a pearl at
6:32 PM
2 Comments:
Oh moo... you poor thing. I have also fallen into the trap of evil weighing machines for vegetables and such... not in Sweden but somewhere else. And the bringing groceries home from the shop in paper bags and making the mistake of putting them on the floor of the bus in snow melt then having them all systematically break while in the middle of the road. Yes Jesper... I'm looking at you (no I'm just kidding you know I love you). Maddy... I feel your pain.
By
Anonymous, at 4:12 AM
Maddy!!! Just a question of continuity... you say in this little story that you're "STILL bicycle-less"... what happened? Did you lose your bike in the land of the dykes??? I guess I'll have to read on to the story of re-conciliation...
By
Anonymous, at 2:47 AM
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