With urban India progressing rapidly everyone is struggling to find time for themselves, family & friends. Working couples, young kids, hectic schedules, long working hours – all lead to a continuous struggle to save time in every activity possible. Arrive, SUPERMARKETS to the rescue. Under one roof, spread across a few floors one can get everything – fruits, vegetables, other provisions, groceries, toiletries, cosmetics, pretty much everything which we use in our day to day lives. An hour or two over the weekend and you are done for the week at least… dump the stuff in the boot of the car and drive home – one major problem resolved.
Due to the reasons above urban India at least has whole
heartedly embraced these supermarkets with open arms and they have become an
integral part of all of our lives. Yeah!!! perhaps the freshness of the
vegetables & fruits has been compromised a bit when we compare to buying
them every day from street side vendors as our parents use to. But in today’s
busy lives whenever there is a face-off between convenience & comfort
against slightly better quality of anything, convenience & comfort wins
almost every time.
This post talks about the stereotypes which I came across at
these supermarkets. I have tried to arrange them in order of one’s journey
right from entry to exit – the entire experience.
1)
Charlie to Bravo, Perimeter
Secure, Proceed with caution – The fun actually starts even before
you enter the market, right at the gate itself. Have you ever seen a bunch of
more uninterested group of people then the security guards at the main gate –
there will be two, one which will have a mirror and look under the front of
your car and the other would ask you to open the boot and check it for
explosives. Now here is the amusing part – first the check thru mirror under
the front of the car. Now I don’t know the story behind this but really the
cars today have such low ground clearance that it is literally impossible to
carry a bomb underneath the front of the car. I myself drive a sedan with a
very low ground clearance, if I ever place a bomb underneath the front, at the
very first speed breaker that I drive on in the city of Bangalore, the bomb
will explode in my face and involuntarily I will become a suicide bomber. The
guard who inspects the boot, he is a bigger idiot – now I can never understand
what is he trying to find with a metal detector when the entire God damn car is
made of metal, honestly he should be concerned if the detector does not beep
rather than when it does. Perhaps they are demotivated as they are still
awaiting the performance bonus which they were promised at the time of hiring
that they would be paid once they detect a bomb, poor misled fellows!!!!!!
2)
OED (Obsessive Elevator
Disorder) – This condition is found among many who shop at these
stores. You have just entered the premises you take the elevator to the
supermarket floor, the moment the door opens even before you have stepped out
someone shoves/ or try to shove their shopping carts into the elevator right
thru your midsection, completely ignoring the fact as to who or how many are
inside. These folks stand right in front of the elevator with their trolleys
and leave no space for people to get out of the elevator also. Now if you would
say that I am so thin that you can’t see me I can think of taking that as a
compliment but I would not like to assume that my head also falls in this
condition. Did all these dumb fucks see “Hollowman” or “Mr. India” right before
they come for their shopping?
3)
Aisle Tetris – I
come across a lot of people whose sense of space & positioning seems to be
seriously impaired, consistently we see people standing right in front of
elevator doors, having conversations on staircases making movement for others
very difficult, same with escalators and security gates, food counters, the
list can go on & on. Space in India at least is a luxury, most of the
supermarkets are pretty cramped and very little space is left as aisles where
customers can traverse through different sections to pick whatever they want to
buy. Then are these stereotypes it almost looks like with their own bodies and
their shopping carts they want to make every shape of block which appears in
Tetris, they would move across the aisles at odd angles, leave their trolleys
right in the middle of aisle in an awkward way and disappear to pick up stuff
from the nearby sections. It’s almost like they are playing tetris in the
market. Sometimes my demented mind takes over and just for the fun of it, I
start picking stuff from these unattended trolleys, within 3 to 4 second the
rightful owner of the stuff in the cart appears and then drives his/her trolley
away close to where they are shopping….. Problem Solved!!!!!!
4)
The Cryst(aisle) maze –
More than a decade back there used to be a game show on TV titled “The Crystal
Maze”, it was one of my favorite ones for quite some time. There are some folks
at these supermarkets which almost find the market layout to be a maze of
sorts; they never have a clue of where to go to get what they want. But the
worst part is they stand right in the middle of aisles and have extended
discussions around the layout and where they should go to find what which make
them fall in category 3 as people obstructing the aisles traffic. My solution
for this is a simple one “Excuse me, Can you let the cart pass please!!!” but
the trick does not lie in the phrase, it’s in the loudness with which it is
said, practice makes you perfect be loud enough so that people in the near
periphery also hears but don’t shout and look at the couple or group of people
to whom this is said, it almost gives me the sarcastic pleasure and the voice
inside me says “See I made you famous, you JERKS!!!!!”
5)
Hyper Enthused & Ready to
Confuse – These are over enthusiastic sales staff, they are
generally only found in sections where stuff life home décor, bed sheets,
curtains and similar stuff are sold, kind of makes sense to have them at these
counters, at the end of the day can you think of any way in which a sales
assistant will be able to convince someone to buy 2 kgs of a vegetable instead
of 1 or 2 boxes of breakfast cereal instead of 1, most likely not. Although the
number of these kinds of hyper energetic sales people is dwindling yet whatever
specimens of this species nearing extinction remains can sometimes be a real
nuisance. A couple of weeks back when the same sales person asked me for the
third time “Sir!! What are you looking for?” I got pissed and I replied “A Soul
mate!!! Do you honestly think you will have everything I am looking for in my
life in your stinking store?” Another instance was at a market which also
stocked some basic garments again a sales rep got on my nerves first he said
“What would you like to try out today?” then after 30 seconds “Sir!!! You can
try anything out and see if you like it”, this again bought my evil side to
life and I replied “How about the girl at the perfume counter, she looks like
she would be worth a try? And does the 30 day return policy also applies” – let
me admit upfront I am not proud of that statement as I have deepest respect
& gratitude for female sex and I thoroughly despise any statement which
objectifies them but some people just have the God gifted ability to get on
your nerves this statement was just an outcome of such an encounter.
6)
Over confused & Not Amused
– These are more prominent in numbers these days and are the exact
opposites of the above stereotype of over enthusiastic sales staff. These folks
have no clue about the layout of the store or how different sections are arranged.
They are just there either to keep a watch or arrange stuff on shelves &
most likely trainee staff who are paid on a daily contract basis. You ask them
anything they would say that they would find out where whatever you are asking
is stored and come back to you and then they disappear, never to be seen or
heard from again. For obvious reasons they also look uninterested in their
jobs. One day on my visit to a supermarket I decided to have fun and with
malicious intent I asked the staff at the cosmetic counter where can I find
Aniseed and the standard answer followed that he would figure it out and come
back to me, but since I was out to have fun I said that I will follow him to
whoever he is going to ask and I am not kidding you this was my journey to find
aniseed – from the cosmetic counter staff to a staff at the breakfast cereal
section, from the breakfast cereal section staff to the staff in the section
where rice, oil, flour etc. were available, from that provisions section to the
dry fruits section, and a staff from dry fruits section took me finally to the
condiments section where while he was still trying to hunt for aniseed. I found
it and declared how elated I was to discover it finally. Well that was one hell
of a roller coaster ride across the store.
7)
CTC (Coupons, Tokens &
Cards) – Well we have reached the billing counter and then when you
eagerly want to get the billing done so that you can get out of the market for
doing better things in life (yeah right like checking gmail for new emails,
Facebook for notifications and whatsapp for messages… really how desperate we
all have become!!!!), at this exact moment these stereotypes will emerge and
out comes their grand collection of coupons, tokens & various cards in the
smallest fractional denomination possible and then they stand at the counter
and count them for ages feels like eternity. In addition to all this, these are
some of the most hilarious stereotypical statements I come across:
i.
This coupon has expired can we
still use it? (yeah right how will you like it if you expire and then your kids
on your dead body says can he/she still make dinner for us at least)
ii.
Last time you said that this
coupon is not acceptable here, can you check again (it is a supermarket not a
Indian Politician who will change statements every second)
iii.
Can you exchange these coupons in
lower denominations? (What the FUCK, is it food coupons or foreign currency,
and what do you think the staff at the billing counter is running a forex exchange
scheme, morons!!!!)
8)
Uncle Scrooge lost in cash –
These are the staff at the billing counter, for some reason these are the
most incompetent people you will ever come across when dealing with numbers
& calculations. They have been given a billing machine/cash register, a
software installed on their billing machines with the sole purpose of doing
billing calculations, most of them even keep a calculator yet with all this
infrastructure they perpetually struggle to identify the amount of change they
need to return. I almost wonder if there was a mathematics exam for selection
of these folks and marks were mistaken for grades.
Supermarkets have their importance in our lives however
shopping for basic provisions and other day to day used stuff still remains one
of the most boring activities to be done over the weekends, but perhaps if you
start identifying stereotypes it may become a bit more entertaining. This
concludes my post for stereotypes which I have observed while shopping in
supermarkets. So how many of them you can identify once you go for your regular
visit with the list of thing to buy in your pockets, feel free to let me know
if there are more and I would expand this post to include more.
In the meanwhile till next time Happy Stereotyping!!!!!
No comments:
Post a Comment