Since every Sunday, I cook for the week, I am going to be in
a crush to cook Monday night so I won’t starve. I decided to head to the
grocery store today, which is my usual routine, and have the stuff ready to go
when I get back.
Well, remember in Jakarta
when I said I had my shopping down so I could do it fast? Today I realized
exactly how fast I am at it.
No kidding, door to door, it was 20 minutes. I know this
because when I got down to the Friendship Store, the department store that
takes up the first fix floors of my building, it hadn’t opened yet. It was
about 2 minutes til 10 a.m. and they open at 10 a.m.
So I waited two minutes (this is included in the total 20),
went in, went down the two escalators and wound through the subway area to the
bottom of the building that is across the street from my apartment building.
The grocery store is in the basement.
Then I grabbed my week’s worth of groceries: cooking oil
(this is not a weekly thing, but I needed some) four carrots, six potatoes (I
need five; they come two to a bag), an onion, bread, a can of Pringles, one
liter of milk and two Cokes. I tossed in a mini bag of M&Ms for the train
ride today.
And that’s it. I bagged my stuff and was out of the store
itself in less than 10 minutes. A week’s worth of food for about $20.
I’m sure I make the people in the Friendship Store wonder.
And man, there are a lot of them.
It’s almost creepy. I was there as the door opened. The door
that I enter is a side door, and it opens to the floor with the hoity toity
stuff on it. The Gucci section is the first thing I see, and it proceeds like
that. Oil of Olay has a little section, too, so I guess “hoity toity” is more
of an attitude in this case.
Anyway, customer service here is amazing. Every
store/section has its own staffing, from the Gucci and Oil of Olay to the
massage and electronic toothbrush displays.
And at 10 a.m., they are all pretty much standing at
attention in the aisle areas, waiting on the customers to come. They all wear
uniforms (not like military or anything, but color coordinated and a lot
fancier than, say, Target’s color coordination) and are essentially lined up.
And when I say “sections,” that’s kind of a loose term. It’s
not a section of, say, kitchen goods. It’d be a section for pots, one for pans,
one for utensils, one for toasters and the like. And each of these has its own
person staffing.
When you go down the escalator, all you see are rows of
people, one or two at a time, standing with their hands folded, waiting to
greet customers.
Just coming off one escalator to another, there were two at
the top and two at the bottom.
It’s just absolutely amazing customer service. Or maybe it’s
something else; I’m not there to shop, so I don’t know. (I did have to dodge
perfume sprayers are couple weeks ago.)
But I think every last one of them was surprised to see me
breeze through at 10:02 with two empty bags and then circle back at 10:17 with
sacks of food.
All right, I am off to Hong Kong.
My air shipment, which contains my camera, is due to arrive on Tuesday, so I
won’t have any photos this go-round.
Monday I am going to a podiatrist to order new insoles, so I
will be back. I’ll get photos then.
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