pandemonium

I always see Buy Low Market's insert in the paper, but I never feel like it is worth a whole extra trip just to get inexpensive bananas. There were a couple of times on my mission when I would go grocery shopping at some of the Latino supermarkets, and although their prices were pretty cheap, the produce was usually sub par. I assumed Buy Low would be the same way. After cleaning out my fridge earlier this week, I realized that I had absolutely no produce at home, and since I am making a conscious effort to cut down on our spending, I figured Buy Low was worth a try. After all, the prices seemed really good (bananas were 4 lbs for $1, oranges were the same, peaches were 2 lbs for $1, lettuce was $1 for 2, etc.).

So I dropped Luis off at work and made my way to the store. When I got there, the parking lot (which normally seems pretty empty) was completely full! I had to park all the way at the end of the lot. I then walked up to the store and found that there were no shopping carts available. I had to wait until the employees rounded them up from people as they loaded groceries into their cars. When I finally got a cart and walked inside, I was greeted with this:
There were people EVERYWHERE! You could hardly move in the produce section. After getting everything I needed (I spent probably $5 on $20 worth of produce), I headed towards the back where both ground beef and chicken was on sale for 0.78/lb. People were literally grabbing 5 lb packages of ground beef out of the employee's hands as she walked around the butcher's counter. I have never seen anything like it. I felt so bad for the employees that had to deal with the mob of people. Fortunately they had great cashiers so checking out was painless (they even had an employee passing around doughnuts and apologizing for the wait).