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Coronavirus Diary II

I have quickly grown tired of the grocery shopping.

At one point, one of the doctor-experts told America to "avoid the grocery store for the next couple of weeks," but an alternate plan wasn't outlined. ("Eat the lint from your belly button!") So--as often--I felt I was in Kafka territory.

If you look on Amazon Fresh, the site will allow you to load up your cart before informing you that "no delivery windows are currently available. New windows are released throughout the day." This is clearly bullshit. New windows haven't been released for a month. I know there are heftier things to complain about, but fuck it. I'm so fucking sick of Amazon.

I'm especially sick of a new twist: Amazon can't concede that groceries just aren't a thing the Amazon gods can do anymore, but half-steps are occurring, we're inching toward the concession. Instead of saying, "Just fend for yourself!" Amazon says, "Find a terrific Whole Foods near you." Yes, Amazon wants to do brand promotion in a pandemic; be sure to avoid Stop and Shop, and Kings, and really make an effort to find a Whole Foods, because Whole Foods is special, and you deserve *special* right now.

This makes me very, very angry.

I am happy to have food available, and money to buy the food with, but I could do without the scarf continuously slipping from my face (I am wondering if the scarf is dotted with bits of "the virus," and if the scarf's value, such as it is, counts as wholly symbolic); I could do without the other grocery buyers, who have every reason to be in the grocery store, but who sometimes disregard the new direction-flow arrows and sometimes actually stop to chat in the middle of a traffic hotspot ("I don't know, do you really think she'll eat the Yoplait???").....I could do without the needless delay at the check-out: "Are you a Preferred Rewards Card-carrier?" because I think everyone should just be grandfathered in right now, everyone should receive Preferred Rewards, or no one should, because the stupid fucking question requires people to stand in that shit-hole virus-breeding grocery store for twenty seconds more.
(And, yes, this world is brutally unfair to grocery-store workers, and all grocery stores should be staffed by Trump and by his daughter, Ivanka, and Ivanka's multiple homes should be seized immediately, etc. All of this goes without saying.)

Whiny and entitled, but that's where I'm at. I think I need to go load up my grocery cart.
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Comments

  1. JohnApril 20, 2020 at 5:11 AM

    i enjoy a good Dan rant. so rare in print!

    ReplyDelete
  2. ReaderApril 20, 2020 at 7:45 AM

    Thanks, John! I'm reading Samantha Irby's book "Wow No Thank You," which is a long rant and inspiring. Maybe not totally worthy of all its buzz but very funny at times.

    ReplyDelete
  3. rebeccaApril 23, 2020 at 7:14 AM

    Worth ALL of its buzz!!!!!!

    ReplyDelete
  4. ReaderApril 23, 2020 at 7:42 AM

    Well.....it's funny and it has that great Q and A portion toward the middle, which I did read out loud to Marc. I would trim most of the essays. I'd trim the notes-on-songs essay, especially. But it's a fun book and she has a gift for making herself into a character--and her observations about tiny things, like observing a cutoff time at which you can no longer cancel the group event slated for 8 PM....that stuff is memorable. Also, to be nitpicky (why not?), I don't think the (funny) anecdote about the Chicago credit card ("Do you know my work?") can *fully* carry all the dramatic/comic weight she wants to assign to it.

    ReplyDelete

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