Monday, December 20, 2010

A Simple Request

Is it too much to ask for grocery stores to put all items where they belong? Not ALMOST all, or NEARLY all...just ALL. I mean, isn't that the job of a grocery store? To have things in their proper places? That was the impression I was under, anyway. Then why, pray tell, are the corn tortillas in Stop & Shop on the OPPOSITE side of the store from all the other tortillas?! There's a whole section of tortillas, right near the deli. So, naturally, I look there first. I carefully check each stack of tortillas, and all of them are made with wheat. Even the tomato and basil ones that are orange. Okay, I say to myself. I've been in this situation before. Except last time, Stop & Shop didn't have the corn tortillas at all. So, after searching every conceivable shelf in the store and concluding that they were nowhere to be found, I headed over to the A&P grocery store...where the corn tortillas were also absent. I finally found them at De Cicco's market. Three stores for a package of corn tortillas. Does that seem right to you?
So back to the story at hand. I say to myself, dammit, I better not have to go to two other stores to find these damn things again. They aren't even that good! They fall apart as soon as you try to roll them up with anything inside. Very poorly made. Maybe it has something to do with the amount of food I try to pack inside them, but I still say it's shoddy work! Anyway, my fiance has an allergy to gluten and wheat products, so I need to get them for her, and she's well worth the effort, so I just patiently trek through the store looking for them.
Oh, I say. There's some pizza crust on a shelf. Perhaps the corn tortillas are hanging out there. I insert myself between a couple of customers and rifle through the contents of the shelf to find NO corn tortillas. This is not looking good, I say.
Then, I remember my fiance telling me last time, after my three-store corn crusade, that they are often found in the Natural Foods section. Well, great, where the hell is that? Of course it's on the opposite end of the store from the rest of the tortillas. But there they are, sure enough.
Tell me, please, Stop & Shop, how is corn considered natural and wheat not? Are both not grown? I guess the wheat ones have more artificial ingredients or something like that. Generally, the list of ingredients on the wheat ones does include more items, some of which sound very scientific, than the list of ingredients on the corn tortillas, which usually includes corn and one or two other things. But I still don't think that justifies putting them a store apart from one another. And I'd like to know how you live with yourself, Stop & Shop.

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