And can you move out of the way?
It’s 9:17 PM on a Sunday. Underpaid teenagers are mopping the floors of your local Publix while staring daggers at you as you slink across a thin, newly applied layer of soap, water and de-greaser. Where do they even keep fruit pectin in here? would it be in the fruit aisle? or the Pectin Aisle? as you creep towards a golden rimmed sign reading “fruit pectin aisle” you see him, standing there, without a thought in his head, a care in the world, or a single shred of consideration for those that avoid talking to strangers at all costs.
We are all painfully aware of these situations. Well how can they be avoided? The short answer is they can’t be. The long answer is that like many of the unpleasant things in life (back pain, ingrown hairs, talkative uber drivers, iPad cash registers asking for a tip, broken earbuds that only work when you hold them like this, fentanyl laced everything, the ever decreasing size of Cheese Heads Mozarella Cheese Cheese sticks, LinkedIn easy apply, broken ice cream machines, flat soda, YouTube shorts, etc) you’re just gonna have to put up with it for the rest of your life.
The inverse of course being a pleasant afternoon, probably some time between four and four thirty, you decide on a whim to see if you can find salmon cutlets that expire today (this usually constitutes a 40-60% discount.) You gather your lemons, your garlic cloves, and you saunter over to the salmon cooler, and begin to sort through the dates. Then you sense her presence, you’ve been alerted by the cross-screams of her litter, emitting a thick cloud of gaseous sweat, band-aids, and mucus. She hates that she has to be here more than you hate that she is here, you can feel her eyes burning two small dots into the back of your head; she’s here for the same thing as you, the salmon. You can feel her judging you, you can sense the psychic pressure building; you are getting the impression that she is capable of navigating the 4th dimension outside of her corporeal form in a way that only ends in your physical harm. You feel your brain start to contract and swell ever so slightly. It feels like someone is plucking your lateral rectus like a banjo. You hastily choose the wrong salmon, and leave.
As a solutions journalist, I hate to leave a story on a sour note. Thus, I propose a solution. Imagine if your favorite stores like HEB, Walmart, or Kroger were open for 24 hours. I know, this seems ridiculous, it’s impossible to keep a store running for 24 hours a day, right? Wrong, with some small changes to the workforce and security, AI and robotics could be used to completely replace the staff, cutting down on theft, insurance, and labor costs. Another concern of the 24 hour model in the current year would be that of urban campers. As of late a trend of urban camping has taken the nation by storm, and has forced many cities and landowners to instate “camping bans”, to much citizen and consumer backlash. Urban campers are drawn to heated spaces with easy access to self checkouts, so to keep the campers at bay all 24 hour stores would come equipped with solid copper floors, attached to a relay of car batteries. Customers would be given special shoes that keep electric currents at bay, so long as you are moving or standing in a self checkout lane.
Technology exists to solve our problems right? Capitalism breeds innovation? I, and many others here at NewsNow News, believe that the 24 hour grocery store is a novel concept, and could change the world as we know it.
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