This past weekend, I took a trip to Washington, D.C. to visit some friends. It was great – the cherry blossoms were in full bloom, and the weather couldn’t have been better. Today, I took a trip to Whole Foods. That was a more miserable experience, so I’m choosing to write about getting groceries instead of our national capital.
What can I say about Whole Foods? At least in New York, it must be a love/hate relationship for most of us – go to Dagostino’s and get smelly, spoiled produce, or go to Whole Foods and get high prices and… where do the keep the mayonnaise? Near the adzuki beans, or is it the unrefined sea salt? Do they even carry mayonnaise? (For the record, yes, they do, but who’s brave enough to try organic mayonnaise? Not me.)
I think my husband really captured the feeling we both get as we descend the escalator to the Whole Foods in the Shops at Columbus Circle mall: “it’s like visiting your rich, hippie cousin,” he says, “Everything seems so nice and beautiful, until you ask to use the bathroom and they show you to their cold, smelly ‘natural’ outhouse.” This is the plight of those of us who enjoy both crisp apples and Lucky Charms – it’s one or the other, kiddo.
And then there’s the crowds. We thought we were really clever today for going to buy our groceries two hours ahead of the rush today, at 3:30 in the afternoon. But we quickly discovered that there is about the same number of people wandering around Whole Foods in the middle of the afternoon as in the evening hours – it’s just an older crowd. Older, and slower.
That’s why we call it Whole Paycheck.
Or Whole Evening, Which We Could Have Been Doing Something Else With Instead Of Standing Forever In That Epic “10 items or less” Line.