Went to an ALDI today and it was kinda a miserable place. Moldy strawberries on the shelf, wilting flowers, just a vague sense of emptiness too. Before I entered, I saw a Black woman walking out and maybe it was my racist assumption that the ALDI was the shop of the less fortunate which colored the rest of my experience. There was one outside door, but on the inside there was a cube with one sliding door directly ahead and another to the right. I made the decision to enter forward, walking past an old white lady with white hair and a cart. There was a black scrunchie on the floor inbetween the double doors and the first thing I saw was the moldy strawberry. I did only see one, but I’ve been taught to assume the whole container is moldy when one is. The strawberries were at the end of a produce stand that also held cabbages, and I found myself looking for defects in them, even though I had no idea what a defective cabbage would look like. There were some kids in a Disney princess pajamas running around me as I tapped out the first sentence on my phone. On a Thursday afternoon. I felt stuffy and silly, but that was the fun of it. I wandered down the poorly-stocked (and quite few) rows, courtesy of the shipping delays due to COVID effects, and said to myself, “This is the meaning of America. This is the meaning of American society.” The rows and stands were so far apart. “This is the economy.” The Instant Brown Rice box at the front of a shelf had a dent the size of a football. “This is the meaning of capitalism.” There was a box of pillows with a shipping label of “ALDI South” for “Country: US” by the door. I knew it; there were two, North and South. When I realized the doors where one-way, I mock-panicked a little. Hostage in the ALDI, I thought. They’ll make me buy something to leave. Was my dad waiting for me? Fleeing the ALDI, I thought as I noticed an alley next to the cashiers I could slip through to reach the exit doors. When I looked at the scrunchie again it was definitely a small child’s sock. I walked all the way down to my car at the end of the parking lot and wished I had taken my coat. My dad was in another store nearby, so I waited in the cold, leaning on the car, and typed the rest of this. If I had spent more time in that ALDI, I probably would have had a spiritual experience. (As if I hadn’t already.) (Truth is, I was just out of place, in someone else’s world. Classism in the ALDI, you could say.)
I went to Wegman’s next and it was normal.