I was prepared to make three grocery stops tonight – Costco, for some Costco-sized things; Walmart, for nearly everything else, and Winco, for a squeeze bottle of Best Foods mayo. That’s Hellmann’s if you’re east of the Rockies, and why they don’t call it that out here is beyond me. Hellmanns.com and best-foods.com are the same except for the name in the logo and that they link to the other version, but mayo.com reports itself as Hellmann’s. This is really a whole other entry, my confusion and irritation over this particular branding oddity. The Costco would not have my desired squeeze bottle, as it’s not Costco-sized, and the Walmart had not had it for many many weeks, which is something else that irritates me no end – they are so proud of their computerized inventory and ordering system, yet they are always freakin’ out of squeeze mayo or my toothpaste or both. Walmart’s robot screwups are also another entry. I may have already have written that entry. I should turn on the search function on this site. Anyway.
I spent a lot of time today defending my need for the squeeze mayo. Somehow it’s okay if both peanut butter and jelly require a utensil, but if only the mayo needs one, that seems wasteful and that makes me crazy. And the jars seem to go bad faster. But this is America, and I have a right to squeeze mayo without having to explain why. For once, the Walmart had some, saving me one stop. The man at the twenty items or less register expressed what I suspect was a lack of concern when I mentioned they’d been out of this for a long while: “You’ve had to stick a tool in your mayo? That’s terrible. It reminds me of the time in Iraq when we lost the corkscrew. We had to live on food and water for weeks.”