When Husbands Go Grocery Shopping Alone
It amazes me how often they mess up.
Grocery shopping is easy. You make a list of things you need, go to the store, get everything mentioned on your list, get some extra stuff that wasn’t on that list for some reason, pay for them, and you’re done.
Voila! Simple, isn’t it?
Yes if you’re going yourself. Not so much, if you can’t go and you leave this to your husband. Then it becomes difficult, painstaking, daunting; you name it.
The Experience
Men, husbands, in particular, have a very short attention span. I recently read that men stop listening to their partners after just six minutes of talking. No kidding, I suspected this all along; even six minutes seem exaggerated but let’s leave this discussion for another day.
Coming back to the point I was trying to make, you have a few precious minutes to explain to your husband what you need, and exactly where in the store can he find it.
You’ll be fortunate if he gets everything on the grocery list. It’s no surprise to find out he only got half of the items; that too may be different from what you wanted — different brands, same brand but a different product, I could go on and on.
For most of his time at the grocery store, you’ll be on the phone with him, guiding him through the store to the exact location of a product. You’ll have to point out the aisle and the shelves accurately, giving directions like google maps.
Even after all those directions, he’ll still not find some items and therefore, will conveniently exclude them — paying no heed to the consideration that it might be an essential item.
Things to Keep in Mind
Always mention the full name of the food item on your list — and not the slangs or anything else that you call it at home. Don’t make your husband work hard trying to match names on the list with what he sees at the store.
Make sure you explain exactly what you want and specify when there are different options to choose from. Otherwise, you’ll get full fat instead of low fat, or a conditioner instead of the shampoo — because they all look the same.
To make things easier, WhatsApp pictures of those ingredients and products that your husband thinks of as complicated and hard to find. It will stop him from making excuses like ‘I don’t know what it looks like’.
Never give your husband a lengthy list of grocery items required; he doesn’t have time for that. Make sure your list is precise and only includes things that are essential and urgent.
Anything other than that, go get it yourself later.
Otherwise, he’ll try to rush it and will end up deciding himself which items are essential and which ones are not. Chances are he’ll leave out the ones you need most urgently.
Making Sense of It
No matter how hard I try to make sense of why husbands do what they do, I’m still clueless. What makes grocery shopping so complicated for them?
It’s not that they are dumb, or blind, or can’t read. They seem quite intelligent and qualified otherwise.
Maybe because they don’t enjoy it, they mess up on purpose, hoping we’ll never ask them again. But they should remember, their wives can be more determined and persistent than them.
We don’t give up easily, do we?
