Sunday Scribblings: Sensation

I get the sensation that Brazilian stores all secretly are mafia fronts. Seriously. People just DO NOT WANT to sell you their products. It's like they have an allergy to profit.

Case in point illustrated here, at Walmart, but also re-emphasized by a friend the other day, who was complaining that every time she goes to the store for fresh milk, they're out. (Most milk is UHT, which comes in boxes and lasts for months without refrigeration. Some people like it, some don't. Me? Only if you add chocolate powder!)

She said she's talked to the manager and begged them to just up their order. "Can't. It'll spoil" is the response. "But I'll buy it! You're always selling out! Just try...trust me. If you buy more, you'll sell more." But they don't.

How many times do we go to the grocery store and realize that if we want to ever taste grapefruit juice/Italian version of nutella/CocoKrispies/cupuaçu jam again, we're going to have to buy up every last one on the shelf, because the depleting stock is in real danger of disappearing forever from our lives? People of the Western world, you should be SO SO SO grateful that your grocery store looks the same from week to week, that when you run out, you can be pretty sure that your friendly neighborhood grocer will restock. We can't. My husband may have married me simply to ensure he would NEVER HAVE TO GO GROCERY SHOPPING AGAIN. And thus never be foiled by the constantly changing shelves, having to play hide-and-seek to find eggs, wandering aimlessly in search of that last item on the list...

I remember one day we went to buy ice. And there were two of those huge, people-sized freezers standing empty in the middle of the store with ICE signs on them. And I asked the employee standing there, "When are you going to get more ice?" And he said, I kid you not:

"We keep running out. So we're going to stop stocking it."

Utter. Madness. I. Cannot. Understand. This.

So we just laugh like maniacal foreigners, as we are obviously missing some key tenet of Brazilian entrepreneurship here, and go hunting, hunting for another place that will sell us what we are looking for. It will happen, eventually.