I normally don’t go shopping on Sundays. It’s chaos. I normally don’t go to City Mall on Sundays. For exactly that reason too. The first Sunday after payday and it being the eve of a public holiday… well, that’s really just standing under the crazy shower and getting soaked.
But I was trapped. I had no food and, you know, a man’s gotta eat. So I thought of a place where I was most likely to find everything I want in one place. There’s my local corner shop, Pick ‘n Pay. But I won’t find the household goods I need there. There’s Merdeka Supermarket a little further away, they’re weak in the toiletries department, if not unnecessarily expensive.
And then there’s the Giant super store at City Mall. They might have most of what I need. But it’s at City Mall. Crazy, chaotic City Mall. For the sake of a 1-stop-shop, I go there anyway. The 10 minutes I take to drive there is immediately doubled by the 10 minutes it takes me to get into the property and around the building to the open parking lot.
Traffic in the Isles
By the time I’m parked and walking towards Giant with my save-the-earth enviro bags in my hand, I’m already agitated, because I know Giant is a human scale model of the parking lot. People blocking lanes with trolleys and screaming kids, needlessly hanging around the free-sample booths to taste every flavour of Nestle Probiotic yogurt or Maggie mee-in-a-cup the promoter has. I’ve got a shopping list, loosely based on where I think my required items are located in the store, hopefully helping me to navigate through the store as quickly as possible.
I hit a snag on my first 5 items, which suddenly Giant does haven’t. Low fat tuna in water. Don’t have. Really!? My spirits drop. Long beans; don’t have. Celery; don’t have. Gillette Foamy; don’t have.
Inflation mate, free has also gone up
While I’m in the toiletries isle I look for toothpaste. I’m attracted by a free toothbrush, because as it happens, I need 1 of those too. Colgate comes handily packed with a ‘free toothbrush’ already. Only RM6.69, which seems a bit pricey for something free. I try to find a 175g tube to compare prices and see how much free free really is. I can’t find it. There’s a 100g tube, and a 75g tube, but no 175g tube. Coincidence, or diabolical plot?
Diabolical plot, I decide when I see that the 250g tube is only RM4.99. So if per gram the 175g is the same as the 250g, then the FREE toothbrush actually costs RM2.30!! It must be for that fancy packaging. How many suckers did they catch with this one, I wonder?
Cashing in. Whoa, not so quick, big fella
For a moment I consider leaving my basket right there in protest, but I figure the effort would go to waste. Eventually, after locating 60% of my list, I head over the tills. More chaos. I try to look for the most intelligent face behind the tills. Their lines usually moves the fastest.
But between some sort of promo that requires the cashiers to give patrons a flier and some stamps according to how much they’ve spent, swiping bar-codes over the laser 3, 4 sometimes 5 times (before manually entering it), packing 2 items only in every cheapo, wafer thin plastic bag and counting every hand full of change 3 times before handing it over to the customer, I’m out of luck.
I choose a lane with 2 brimming trolleys. It takes forever. Eventually it’s my turn. I empty my basket with deft precision, heavy items in front, light ones behind. I’m packing my own bags. I intercept the packer on the other side and say “Thanks, I got it”. I don’t think I smiled.
He looks at me the way packers always look at me when I use my own bag and he probably thinks what they all think “hmmm, another one of those strange foreigners”.