A Buying Shame – The Dark Side of Supermarket shopping

There comes a time in every man’s life where he must man up and by sanitary pads.

While the above sentence would seem like a contradiction at first glance, I would remind you that men are sometimes entrusted to go to the supermarket and buy these small items of great importance for their significant other, or dependants.

A few weekends ago I was faced with this very prospect. It’s no big deal really, as a collective partnership we’ve bought items of this specific nature more times than I can count (I have ten good counting fingers + additional backups on my feet). One could assume this would be a relatively easy task to carry out solo.

To be safe, my wife – knowing I had been trained in the art of colour differentiation since birth (Elmo = Red, Big Bird = Yellow, Cookie/Carrot Monster = Blue), text me the details of what I was looking for; a blue and a pink packet.

I never go shopping without a plan, and this time it was virtually flawless. While doing my best to maintain discretion – the plan was to stand in the aisle, looking anywhere but towards the pads I’m meant to be buying (in this particular supermarket it means staring intensely at toothpaste). While I’d appear to the untrained eye to be something of a toothpaste connoisseur, looking for the right finish for my teeth, I’d actually be using my peripheral vision to scan packets of Tampax and Libra.

No good plan is complete without an exit strategy, and my exit strategy would then be to use self-service so I didn’t have to look another human in the face and risk having them look into my eyes and see my shame. In the unlikely (and unfortunate) event that the self-service lanes all be in use, I’d have to pick up some bread, lettuce and beer to pad out my shopping (pun not intended) and use a manned checkout where the staff might try and make small-talk, while silently judging ones purchases.

Fast-forwarding along to me standing in the aisle I used to avoid like the pink toy section of The Warehouse and I realised the first part of my plan wouldn’t come into fruition as all of the packets in my peripheral view were varying shades of blue and pink. The writing on the packets was also far too small to decipher out the corner of my eye, further complicated by the Italic font that all these companies insist on using to infer ‘gentility’ and ‘comfort’. Forced to stare directly into the face of the beast, I was facing down what appeared to be too many options for a relatively straightforward bodily occurrence. Wings, No-Wings, liners, slims, something for the beach, something for Tuesdays. The choices were overwhelming. Without a support person here I felt like (at least what I envisage/what Hollywood would have you believe) an eleven or twelve year old girl going through puberty, and all that it encompasses, for the first time. Alone, afraid, confused.

It was in my moment of vulnerability I was approached by a woman in her late thirties. “If you need any help or have any questions just ask”. I could have cried on her shoulder, though decided that a grown, bearded man crying on into the shoulder of a woman balancing a baby in the other arm in a supermarket aisle next to rows of tampons and pads would probably look a little strange to outsiders. Playing out the above situation in my head, I must have had a blank or confused look on my face, because to her original offer she then added “…If you’re buying for someone else…” as if to clarify that I didn’t necessarily need the advice personally, or to suggest that she is ok with whatever lifestyle choices I may or may not indulge in. The unnecessary clarification made me feel a tad self-conscious.

Feeling a flush of red come over my face, probably from the air-conditioning cranking hot air (and not embarrassment), I had my usual cool, calm, collected response of “I’m good, thanks though” primed for delivery. Somewhere between my brain and mouth the signal was intercepted though, and a nasally, high pitched, squeaky laugh came out instead.

My pride now shredded beyond repair, I snatched the nearest pink and blue packets and headed for the self-service checkouts. As I started to scan my items I was met with a message that could turn any mood into dismay; “More than one item in bagging area, please see operator for assistance”*. Damn.

*Ok, that last part didn’t actually happen on this trip, but what a tidy ending it would be if the machine did spit up an error. Just imagine. Now you get a shitty footnote because you couldn’t suspend belief for long enough to finish the story. Well done you.