There’s etiquette required when shopping for your basic food needs, and some rogue Aussies don’t play by the rules.
Supermarkets are the great equaliser.
It doesn’t matter who you are, how much money you earn or where you live; we all have to go buy milk.
Even Ita Buttrose has to trek around Coles to find some calcium.
It unites us and we all bond by complaining about grocery prices and annoying layouts, and yes the people in the store that behave like animals.
I’m one of them.
I often go shoeless at my local supermarket and sometimes in my pyjamas, but at least I can recognise it as feral behaviour.
So, here’s a list of the most feral supermarket behaviour I’ve ever witnessed, and yes, if you do it, you are feral – but I promise, that doesn’t mean I think less of you.
Welcome to the club as Miley Cyrus famously sang, “We can’t be tamed!”
1. Not wearing shoes to the grocery store
The people that don’t wear shoes don’t realise how feral they are being, but there’s always something confronting about seeing someone’s bare toes while you are searching for sour cream.
I often turn up shoeless and fancy free at my local supermarket, but because I’m a giant hypocrite, I must admit I find other people’s toots confronting. (If you have toe hair, please put a sock on).
2. Making out at the grocery store
We get it you are in love, having sex, probably at the relationship stage where you’ve never screamed. “Do you not know how to close a cupboard door?” or “I didn’t say I hated your Dad; I said he was difficult and maybe needed some intensive therapy”.
But the rest of us are here to do our food shop like the loveless monsters we are.
We don’t want to be trying to move around you and your lover to locate our favourite flavoured Gravox politely – we are already suffering enough by eating instant gravy you don’t need to punish us further.
Stop making out please, it is upsetting everyone, even the preservatives are judging you.
3. People that fondle all the fruit
You are allowed to test and feel three avocados at most; otherwise, it just makes everyone else feel like they are intruding on your sensual experience and absolutely under no circumstances should you be sniffing fruits or vegetables you aren’t planning to buy.
It is a tomato, not a baby’s head.
As far as I’m concerned if you sniff, you buy. You aren’t Edward Cullen, you need to relax and behave like an upstanding citizen at the grocery store.
4. Snagging the milk to get the best expiry date
If you go to the milk section and fumble around the back, get the milk with the latest expiry date and ignore the one with the expiry date ending soonest – you are a savage.
You are breaking the rules, and being very rude to your fellow shoppers.
In saying that, I do it all the time too and while it might make you a bad person at the shopping centre, it makes you a great person to live with.
5. People who don’t know how to handle a trolley
It is a trolley, not a weapon. Stop leaving them spread out over the aisles so people can’t move past it.
You are being rude, and honestly should have your drivers license suspended.
If you can’t operate a trolley you have no right to operate a car and I’d hate to see you navigating a roundabout if the cheese aisle at Woolies defeats your navigation skills.
6. If you wear your pyjamas to the supermarket
I do this easily once a week, but I recognise it as a feral and rogue move by me.
In my mind, I look cute and relaxed, but in reality, everyone looks like Lindsay Lohan during the early 2000s bad years, and no one really wants to see you in your bed wear. Well, besides the person you just matched on Tinder with.
7. People that start eating before buying
You can wait! Also, there’s no denying you are likely leaving a trail of crumbs in your wake as you march around the store.
This isn’t Handsel and Gretal, no one wants to follow where you’ve been.
Put down the chips and eat them in your car shamefully like a person with manners.
8. Sampling too many grapes from the prepacked bags
One cheeky grape, go for your life, a third? Now you’re just hurting someone else and stopping them from getting bang for their buck. We are in a cost of living crisis, stop being a scab. (I’ll have to remind myself not to be a scab next time I’m gobbling down grapes).
9. Putting stuff back on the wrong shelves
We’ve all done it, but we shouldn’t. Make the extra effort. You are ruining the aesthetic of the grocery store.