Google Review of Albertson's, Ramona, Ca

May Something, 2020, the Year of the Covid. 

Everyone is staying away from everyone else, everyone is wearing masks. But you've never experienced more chit chat and conversation and downright commiserating while grocery shopping in all of your life. Sweat drips into your eyes, clouding one of the few remaining unimpaired sensory mechanisms you have left, not to mention your glasses steam up with every breath you desperately suck in and heave back out, along with the canvas material from which your mother in law sewed your face protection. 

And as you stoop and peer into the shelves to locate what you need, the person closest to you down the aisle, oh, six or so feet down, is cursing and grumbling to themselves, but also most definitely to you and for your benefit, too. And you agree. The most profane small talk just spills right out. Right out there between boxes of cereal and once again fully stocked bags of rice and beans and onto the squares of the linoleum floor. Perfectly vulgar curse words, within earshot but really to your closest co-shopper, a perfect stranger. And you cuss and complain and squinch up your faces to show each other you're smiling at each other. And there is closeness. And comfort. 

No capers, though, the capers spot is empty on the top shelf between imported olives and overly red bell peppers in jars. But look! They sell duck fat. Neat! You've heard amazing things but never tried it. Curse. Cuss. Complain. Strain to see through the atmosphere of fog accumulated around your head. There rings a slight echo down the toilet paper aisle as another shopper lets out their own opinions, also artfully adorned with a vocab not typically heard in the grocery store. 

You make your way to checkout, and fall in like a well trained soldier. The payment pad is covered in cellophane, and after touching the damned thing no less than 45 times to introduce your funds, your muffled voice asks, "So how often do you all have to change this?” To which the equally masked and both named Steve cashier and bagger answer, "Who the hell knows?" and "Never," and "I don't even know, maybe the manager does it once a day." 

And you all squinch up your faces at each other and roll your eyes in total concert. In togetherness. And you wave farewell to the other potty mouths at the other end of the store, you grab your duck fat, and you make your way back to quarantine, alone, at home.