I’m not trying to get anybody in trouble. Not my intent. So, please don’t go report this and get somebody fired. Those folks need those jobs.
That said. I just cannot shake my sense that my supermarket is violating health code stuff. It’s the Safeway off College, the one by the art school.
I was there Sunday, in the hour before they close. I don’t usually go that late, but I’d spent time with my cousin that afternoon and it just pushed everything back. Anyway, I park close to the door and head inside.
And the place just does not smell right. There’s a stench. It seems to be coming from everywhere. And my first thought is, “It’s got to be the carcasses.”
I don’t usually start shopping in the Carcass Section. I don’t like them just sitting in my cart in room temperature as I shop. But I want to figure this odor out. I push my cart over there and the glass case is pretty picked over. There’s still a lamb carcass, and a piglet carcass, and a few disemboweled hens. I roll by them all casually, sniffing as I go. I wager it’s the birds, because they were Organic-Tortured and those tend to rot faster than animals who were tortured and pumped full of antibiotics.
But the Organic-Tortured hens don’t smell any worse than anything else. I ask the butcher, “Were these carcasses all bled-out and gutted within the last few days?” And he assures me they were, and that Safeway has a seal of quality for a reason.
And I believe him! Because the smell isn’t any worse in the Carcass Section than it had been at the entryway.
I usually take the store aisle by aisle, but the next likely suspect is the Vegetables Section. I head on over there, getting ready to breathe through my mouth. But when I get there, nothing looks unusual. I bend down and smell the blood on the floor. It’s not crusty. Still sticky to the touch. I stand back up.
And then I do the same thing I did with the Carcass Section, I mosey down the display, inspecting produce as I go. I pause at the tomatoes. I squeeze one. It’s ripe. I pick off one of the callouses and hold it up to the light. It’s thick alright, but that means that whoever it came from had been doing this a while, and I prefer that. I sniff the callous. Nope. No fungus. I stick the callous back to the tomato and put it in my cart.
The smell is actually a little less pungent here. I move into the Fruit Section. And I head straight for the pineapples. I have seen flies there before.
But there are no flies! These look really fresh. A little picked over—again, it’s Sunday night—but good. I don’t need pineapple this week, but if I did, I’d probably get at least two of these. I give one a squeeze. Tough skin. Good, firm flesh. Plenty of fingernails. And whole ones too, not just the little chips you get with apples and kiwis. You can see the bloody nailbed roots on these; they were torn away in one, clean jerk. I lift a pineapple of them to my ear and sure enough, I can still hear the echo of a shriek. I’m guessing a woman, but it’s faint.
The pineapples don’t stink. Neither do the pears. Or the melons. I give the berries an extra check, because sometimes the coating of mucus and tears has a masking effect on rot. This is not the case tonight. The fruit is good. Bette than usual, honestly.
The odor is unlikely to originate from the boxed foods, but I do a quick pass up and down the aisles. There are ingredients I need here, but I’m fixated on this smell, so I barely look at my list. It’s not coming from the Breakfast Aisle. It’s not coming from the Food Taken from the Pantries of Murdered Mothers Aisle. Not the Cooking Oils. Or the Bags of Crunchy Ashes Aisle. Or the Peanut Butter, or the Noodles, or the Condiments.
Okay, the bags of crunchy ashes were two for six bucks, so I did go ahead grab a Regret ‘n’ Suffocation and an Exploitative Nacho Ranch and toss them in the cart. I eat healthy, but I have my weaknesses.
I’m almost ready to ask an employee where the smell is coming from when it becomes obvious to me—it’s the frozen food.
Like I said, healthy eater, I don’t shop in frozen foods. I don’t know which foods are the likely culprits. So I follow my nose down the long line of freezers. Frankly, I’m pretty grossed out just looking at these meals. Who eats this shit? I mean, Anus Meat Poppers? I grab that one out of the freezer and turn the box over. Yep. Come on, people. Don’t look at the branding, look at the ingredients. “Anus Meat Product.”
I knew there was no way that thing had actual anus meat in it. I put the box back on its shelf backwards. Maybe that way someone will pay attention.
And as I do this, I get a whiff. A strong, rancid whiff. I gag, but I’m righteously satisfied. Bingo.
I follow the whiff. I go freezer door by freezer door, opening them and inhaling, moving closer to ground zero. On the sixth door, the stench is so thick, I cough. I slam that door shut for a minute. I breathe deep. And then I open it back up.
It’s some frozen dinner pasta. A whole bunch of red boxes you heat up in a microwave. I pull out the box closest. Some Italian looking guy with a big mustache and his arms flung wide. The branding reads, Mario’s Landfillers Mac & ‘rhhea! I scan the box for the sell-by-date.
Wow. This thing isn’t just expired. It’s expired by almost a year.
I grab the one behind it. Same story. And the one behind that. Same long-gone expiration date. I set the three expired meals in the top shelf of the cart and start looking for an employee. I am complaining. I will be that lady tonight.
I walk past three empty aisles until I see an employee standing by the hot food bar with a big cardboard box. I head over. I grab a Mac & ‘rhhea out of my cart and am about to address the employee. But I halt.
I cannot believe what I’m seeing.
The employee is shoveling a steaming hot tray of food right into the box.
Surely he’s not throwing them away. Surely.
I ask, “Excuse me?”
The employee jerks backwards and looks at me. “Yes?”
“Those are Sweet ‘n’ Sour Mixed-Carcass Nuggets, right?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“They’re still hot. You’re not…throwing them away. Right?”
He smirks awkwardly. “It’s the end of the shift, ma’am. We have to.”
“But you can serve them again tomorrow. Or donate the food to a refugee camp.”
He gets this scared look on his face and I assume it’s because he thinks I’m angry at him—which, I am—but then a voice from behind me startles me. A man asks, “Miss, is this employee bothering you?”
I jerk around. It’s a manager. Big nametag and everything. His eyes are wide and he’s smiling.
“No, no,” I spit out, instantly nervous. “No, I was just…asking a question about the mixed-carcass nuggets.”
“Were you hoping to purchase some? Did this employee prevent you from doing what you want?”
“No! No! I don’t want any—Look. Are you smelling this?” I shove the cold box towards the manager. “These are expired!”
He takes it from me carefully and inspects it. His smile falls. “Oh, ma’am. I am so sorry.”
I tell him, “They’re all expired. By a year! And it’s making the whole store smell awful. Please address this.”
The manager’s face goes ashen. He falls to his knees and begins to weep. And I appreciate good customer service, but I don’t need the waterworks. It’s too late though. The manager grabs me by the knees and starts screaming, “Oh God! Oh God, I’M SO SORRY! SHAME! SHAME ON MY HEAD! OH GOD, THE FIRES OF SHAME!”
I look over at the employee. He’s resumed shoveling the nuggets into the box, pretending not to notice.
Enough. I put my hands on the sobbing manager’s shoulders and try to loosen his hold. He looks me in the eyes and pleads, “Punish me, Ma’am.”
I pull my hands back.
“I beg you, Ma’am. I can’t bear the shame. Punish me.”
I need this to be over with. I ask him how he would like to be punished. “Feed them to me,” he says.
“But sir, these are frozen. Like bricks. You won’t be able to chew!”
“Shove them in.”
This was not how I saw my Sunday going. But I initiated this moment. I’ll finish it. I open the first box.
It’s not easy. The stench is incredible. The ingredients are fully rotten. I’ll never order this dish again, not even at a nice restaurant.
Also, his mouth rips. A lot. There’s blood. A couple of other shoppers start pausing to watch. But after about ten minutes, I manage to get the three umber blocks into his esophagus. Which also rips.
I offer to help him to his feet, or even breathe into his mouth a little, but the manager firmly refuses any aid. Me and the few other customers watch as he struggles to survive and, when it’s clear he has died, we clap politely.
Thank God, the employee has good customer service instincts. He breaks the mood with, “Ladies and gentlemen, to thank you for your trouble, anything in the hot food bar is on the house tonight. Please enjoy.”
The small crowd cheers, even me. I don’t want any hot carcass tonight, but I’m clearly the only one. The other shoppers swarm the hot food bar, laughing, packing their to-go boxes with steaming chunks.
The employee approaches me once more and says, “Thank you for informing us, Ma’am. I’ll see to it that these Mac & ‘rhhea’s are swapped out.”
“Thank you. And thank you for finding a creative solution, rather than wasting all that hot food.”
“You got it, Ma’am! Always looking out.”
I nod. I go back to shopping. I check out. I go home. I make myself some dinner. A salad. It’s good.
Like I said, I’m not trying to get anyone else in trouble. And I appreciate the steps the Safeway staff took to fix the problem. But I still can’t relax about it. Someone there is not paying attention. And I doubt it was just one sloppy manager.
Has anyone else had an experience like this at the Safeway on College? The place seems like a health department headline waiting to happen. You feel me here?
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Credits
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