Why I Despise Kroger, and You Probably Do Too

I hate Kroger. I loathe that store with every fiber of my being.

It's not just that it's always crowded with slack-jawed sheep staring blankly at the 2,054 varieties of breakfast cereals as if the secrets of the universe are about to be revealed. It's not just the shrill whiny spawn of shrill, whiny psuedo- humans from the shallow end of the gene pool, clinging to the cart and beating on their siblings like so many monkeys fighting for the last banana.

it's not just the infuriatingly oblivious women chatting on their cell phones about whether or not their husbands are really cheating or trying to arrange Jr's next playdate while blocking the four-foot ailse of death with their buggies full of organic veggies, LifeWater and cottage cheese.

It's not even the cashiers whose conversations I am obliged to interrupt as the bagboy puts the bananas and twelve cans of soup into one bag... which will split open as soon as I lift the bag to put it into my trunk.

All of the above, I resignedly accept as a tradeoff for not having to forage in the wild for roots and berries. It's more than that.

The bagboys are akwats forgetting to put one item in my bags. I get home, unpack, and wonder where in the hell the pimentos got to. You know, the pimentos I needed for that dip I was planning on taking to a party which I am already late for. I have to dig through coffee grounds and garbage to find the receipt to confirm that yes, I did pay outrageously for those stupid gourmet pimentos.

Out to the car to search trunk and floorboards. No pimentos. Back into the house, rechecking the cabinets and countertops, even the freezer. No pimentos. Drive back to Kroger, shove my receipt in the face of a different cashier -- because you know the one from before is on break now, naturally -- and demand my freakin' pimentos.

This requires the intervention of a manager -- who, judging by the length of time it takes him/her to reach the front of the store, must have been stocking frozen foods in Siberia. He and the cashier shuffle around the register area looking for a jar of pimentos -- at one point i catch the manager looking into the trash can and i have to wonder, if my pimentos are in fact there, will he merely fish them out and hand them to me, with a glob of the cashier's gum stuck to the top?

Finally the manager sighs and tells me to go get another jar of my pimentos off the shelf.

Did you get that? He TELLS me to GO GET ANOTHER JAR.

Because I am late, and afraid that at any moment my head is going to shoot right off my spine and richocet around the store, probably landing in the cereal aisle where two snotty children will procede to fight over it -- I don't give him a lecture about customer service, but trudge off to find the pimentos.

When I return to the front, the manager is gone and the cashier is looking blankly at me as if she has just experienced a complete CIA mind-wipe. I remind her of our journey together around the register just a few moments before, searching for the pimentos.

She asks me if I have my receipt.

I tell her I handed the receipt to her earlier.

"When?" she asks. "You didn't give me no receipt."

Must...not.... kill. Must... not...

Finally she produces the receipt from her pocket, with a cheeky little smile and an "oops!" that makes me wonder what her heart tastes like.

She says I have to take the receipt and my new jar of pimentos to the Service Desk, where the entire crew of a local landscaping company is in line to cash their paychecks.... and they are as fragrant as manly men who spend a day in the hot sun playing with manure are bound to be. None of them speak much English, and the transactions proceed with all the speed of a large glacier racing uphill.

But the time I leave the store, my jar of pimentos clutched between two white-knuckled hands and my left eye twitching, the very sight of those pimentos makes me ill.

Sometimes, upon the discovery of yet another missing item, I have simply said "F--- it" and waiting until my next regularly scheduled trip to Hell's Supermarket. Now knowing how the game is played, I go straight to the Service (!!?) Desk.

"You bought the eye drops last Thursday," she says, eyeing me as if I look familiar from the post office wall. "Why didn't you come back that day when you first realized they weren't in your bag?"

"Because...." Gritted teeth. The sound of my own blood pounding through my ears. "It was eight o'clock at night and I was too tired to drive all the way back here."

"If they were left here-" dramatic pause for effect tells me she believes this is merely an attempt to scam Kroger out of a five dollar and forty-five cent bottle of eye drops - "someone would have put them back on the shelf by now. You really should have come back right away."

"Let me get this straight," I say. "You are telling me that it's MY fault for not dropping whatever I was doing and coming all the way back to this store to correct a mistake YOU made? Is that what you're telling me?"

"Ma'am, I'm just saying you shoulda come back as soon as you --"

"Call your manager. I WANT TO SPEAK TO YOUR MANAGER RIGHT NOW."

Thiis is the kind of relationship I have with Kroger. These are not isolated incidents. Crap like this happens all the time. Kroger hates me, and I hate Kroger. If Kroger were a little old lady crossing the parking lot, I'd run her over.

In recent months, I have been struggling to quit smoking. I go a few days, fall off the wagon, get back on the wagon, you get the picture.

When I finally got health benefits at work, I was thrilled to find out they would cover smoking cessation medications, even over the counter ones. I trot off to Kroger (which is also for some twisted reason I don't fully understand also where I have chosen to do my pharmacological business) and present my new card.

The tech looks at the card, looks at me, and says, "We can't bill insurance if you don't have a prescription."

"Even for an OTC item? Nicotine patches?"

"You have to have a prescription."

So I leave, condemned to smoking for another day at least.

I call my doctor, tell him what I need. His nurse says I have to come in for a physical. To make sure I am healthy enough to quit smoking, I presume.

I wait two weeks to see the doctor. He gives me a prescription. I take it to the Kroger pharmacy. They tell me to give them a few minutes. I go and do the rest of my shopping and return to the pharmacy where there is now a line of snuffling, sneezing, wheezing and generally miserable people in front of me. I am certain at least two of them are Alzheimers patients. I wait.

It's now been at least 40 minutes since I dropped off the script. When I finally get to the window, the tech says, "Oh, it's not ready yet."

The store is hot, and two flies have been dogging me from the moment I set foot in the store. I haven't had a cigarette all day, and my will power is crumbling rapidly.

"How can it possibly take so long?" I ask. I know I'm losing it but I can't stop myself. All I want to do is go home. And smoke. A lot. "It's not like you have to count it or mix it or even label it -- it's over the counter nicotine patches, for Christ's sake! You just take them out of the cabinet here and you take my insurance card and then you let me the hell out of this store."

Everyone in the pharmacy is looking at me now.

The head pharmacist says snippily, "If all she wants is patches, then go get them out of the cabinet and she can take them up front to ring them-"

"I already explained to you that i need to pay for them here to use my insurance," I tell her. "My insurance pays for this!"

"If insurance is going to pay for this, then you have to wait your turn."

"How much longer is it going to take?"

Snotty smile. "Could be as long as another hour."

I left the store, my head filled with visions of carnage that would make Quinten Tarantino proud. I did not get my patches yesterday. I don't know if I can stand to go by and try again today. I'm still too pissed off.

If I lived even a mile closer to the nearest Publix's, I would shop there, and tell Kroger to piss off. But Publix is a good thirty minutes from my house, and in the summer time, ice cream would puddle before I got to my driveway.

I love Publix. The people who work there are kind, smiling, eager as puppies to cover me with slobbery kisses. I can get sushi there, and the seafood guy will steam fresh shrimp just for me while I shop. They have scones in the bakery, and I get a nice meal of samples as I wander through the store. I go in and come out smiling, so unstressed and relaxed that I always tell the cashier and bag person how wonderful they are, and how much I love shopping at Publix.

Sure, things cost a little bit more there, but it's worth it, to me, to not be pushed to a homicidal rage every time I run out of milk.

Or pimentos.

Please God, let Publix open a store closer to my house. It may well one day save a life.