Yes, a short tail of the peaches and my long running disdain, and often anger, with the abilities of the grocery store bagger.
I bought several donut peaches at the store yesterday. They have a very strong yet mild perfumey smell to them. It's strong if you're standing over the bin of peaches, but a few in the plastic bag were actually overwhelmed by the plastic bag, strong yet mild.
I picked carefully, selecting peaches with a good scent and no bruising. I carefully lowered them into the bag, excited at the little treat that should reside within these delicate little morsels. Peaches are delicate anyway, but these little guys are even more delicate.
Preparing lunch today, I put our sandwiches together and turned to the fruit part. Those peaches sat, still in the bag, waiting for us to dive in. What went into the bag as fruit that was as perfect as possible came out of the bag almost inedible. They were bruised, each and every one, over at least a third of their tiny bodies.
I've thought before that I should just demand to bag my own groceries. I don't feel that I'm really that anal about it, but I pay attention. I was taught to bag groceries many years ago at a grocery store job. It wasn't a class on the subject, but a sense of order and appropriateness was taught in the methodology of placing items into a bag. I find it doubtful the many people care based on my experience with bagging.
I really don't feel I'm asking much, and I don't expect every employee in a store to be aware of the nuances of all their products. I do want the person bagging my groceries to know how to handle produce. Regardless of the product, I take the time to check it out. I'll walk away from bad produce and change my menu before I buy crap. You can believe that I didn't purchase bad fruit or damage it. Yet I am throwing away half the amount of peach that I purchased because I also won't serve bad fruit.
I borrowed the picture from VegiWorks, and when I say borrow, I mean that I used Google image search to find some pretty peaches, and I like these guys' site the best, so I used the picture. I haven't checked the site out much, but it's pretty.
3 comments:
We went grocery shopping Monday and my husband and son brought the groceries in. As I was putting them up, I asked DH what he was thinking by putting the eggs in with the canned goods. He swore that he didn't do it, that the bagger did. Eggs. Canned goods. Not a good match.
My dad returns produce on a regular basis for the same reasons you are upset about. Maybe you should march back to the store and demand new peaches.
And you can move to my town, we have a store where we have to bag our own groceries.
I thought about returning them, but I'd cut them up and dissected the icky bits out already.
We've just gotten to where we put all the heavy stuff on the conveyer belt first and save the produce and eggs and bread for last, so they don't have as much of a chance to smash them.
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