Earlier this week SMART and I went to Durham, NC for a Bonterra Ad Agency meeting, big steak dinner that evening, and a whirlwind look at grocery stores the following day. SMART went bonkers when he saw the adorable shopping carts at the first Kroger store. In fact, I was barely out of the passenger seat, as he dashed to the far side of the parking lot and scarffed up his favorite color of kiddy POD shopping buggy, and was on his way in the store.
I almost ‘freaked’ in front of the rest of the survey team, but how could I possibly get angry at SMART. We followed him in, saw what we had to, and then left to see the rest of the market. (I had to ride in some kind of wildly big SUV think.)
When I returned several hours later SMART was sobbing uncontrollably in front of the store. He had run through his entire box of tissues trying to dry the tears of a broken heart. It seems as though the ’smarty pants.’ ‘over-educated,’ ‘blue-blooded,’ residents of Durham treated SMART like some kind of alien from NC State.
From what I could drag out of SMART, he was in the store less than ten minutes when he was literally pushed back out the same door he came in by insults, engineering slurs, snide remarks, and every kind of unimaginable four letter word known to mankind. He felt so ‘un-American.’
SMART entered the store with all of the innocent enthusiasm of a child, and excited that he was doing the family grocery shopping for the week. His world however, soon crashed.
As he pushed his buggy down the cereal aisle a snide pre-teenaged boy punched SMART in the nose and wanted to know what cereal box he had come out of. The Seafood Manager asked SMART if he could swim, or just float. A little girl in the school supply aisle remarked to her mother, but loud enough for SMART to hear, “Mommy, Mommy, I am afraid of that big pencil sharpener.”
The Dairy Manager quipped to smart, ” I know you look like and egg, but can you cook an omelet?” In the Pet Department two teenaged twin girls were going at it with each other as to whether or not that‘nanoPOD’ thing was a big dog bone, or a cat toy. The store’s co-manager kicked SMART in his side to see if he was made of plastic or metal. (It’s plastic.)
But, the cruelest cut of all came from a diminutive little old lady, who herself was putzing around the store in an electrified wheel chair type shopping cart. She pulled right out in front of a terrified SMART and brazenly asked him if he was one of those machines that went up and down the aisles cleaning and polishing the floor. And that if he was, she wanted him to know that she did not like shopping when he was in the store.
