The Stressor No One Talks About

They say the top three stressors in life are death, divorce and loss of a job.  I may be going out on a limb here, but I think there is another stressor out there that is way more stressful than losing a little job that provides food and a roof over your head, not to mention access to health care and porcelain veneers.  Honestly, I’m surprised no one has talked about it.  

The stressor I am referring to is the enormous stress that occurs when our beloved grocery stores up and change things around on us shoppers.  Store managers call it “reorganization to expedite the shopping process.”  I call it “cruel and unusual punishment to up the consumption of painkillers.”

One day we know where the mixed nuts are, the next day we are frantically searching for them on all fours. One day we can blast through the store in seconds flat, the next day we are camped out in the condiment aisle hunting for horseradish. One day we are happy, the next day we are sad. It’s enough to make a grown women stage a sit-down in frozen foods!

Yes, I’m sure men also free stress when grocery stores have the audacity to reorganize their shelves, but women feel the audaciousness more, much more.  And it’s not only because we do most of the grocery shopping.  It’s because we derive comfort from knowing where grocery products are; and, quite frankly, when that comfort zone is attacked, we get frazzled.

My favorite grocery store recently reorganized, and I’ve been battling a full-body rash ever since. I’d quell the inflammation with hydrocortisone cream, if I could (sniff) find it.

Maybe it’s me.  I admit to being a shopper with a game plan versus a shopper who meanders.  I map out my shopping sequence based on what I need, and get in and out of there in record time.  My list is foolproof, and my focus is steely.  Friends who see me know not to approach me.  Store personnel run for cover when they see me and my smokin’ cart barreling down the aisles.  Babies break into tears.

Okay?  I like to shop hard and hightail it out of there in under an hour.

But all that’s changed.  Now I shop with trepidation, knowing full well that I won’t be snapping products off shelves with the alacrity of a lizard.  Now I crisscross all over the place, wasting precious minutes.

Now I shop soft and crawl out of there at the end of several long hours.

“It’s the Bermuda Triangle of food shopping,” I cried to my sister.  “I go in there and circle and circle and circle, worried that I’ll never be released. And it’s not just me either.  I swear I saw several shoppers slumped over their carts in Aisle 9, babbling something about Bisquick.  They may have even been talking in tongue.”

She told me I needed a vacation.

I don’t need a vacation.  What I need is a one-on-one with the store’s Big Cheese, where I explain what all this product repositioning is doing to my and other women’s delicate immune systems. Obviously, this person doesn’t have a clue!  Otherwise, the store would be doing something to assuage our stress. I don’t know what that would be, but if it involved limes from produce, tonic from the soda aisle and happy juice from across the street, there’s a darn good chance I could forgo the rash cream altogether.

Originally published in Messenger Post Newspapers