Living Retired — ‘Apple Avalanche!’
Living Retired — ‘Apple Avalanche!’
By Gary Chalk.
Here in southern Ontario a grocery store chain called Farm Boy has become my favourite store because when I shop there, I know what is, well, in store: a terrific selection of high-quality fruits and vegetables.
Farm Boy deserves an A+ for their produce presentation — except for their apple displays. At the core of my problem with their apple display is how they arrange the apples. Other grocery stores heap the apples mishmash. Not at Farm Boy. I’m thinking they developed their way of displaying apples at a produce department meeting that I would have liked to have been a fly on the wall — okay wrong choice of words. I imagine it went something like this…
“Good morning Farm Boy shoppers. Thank you for shopping with us. Would our Apple Associates please come to the staff meeting room.”
Minutes later the produce manager spoke with the Apple Associates…
“At Farm Boy we are produce-proud. I propose we provide plenty of pleasing produce presentations. Any possibilities?”
One apple associate said, “Instead of piling our apples willey-nilly like the other stores why don’t we arrange them in nice, neat rows?”
Another apple associate built on this suggestion, saying, “And at the same time how about we tilt the display so the apples slope down towards the shoppers.”
Sounds appealing to apple buyers, doesn’t it? What could possibly go wrong? I’ll tell you what can go wrong…
The other day I was pushing my grocery cart through the produce section towards the apples. I placed my empty shopping bag on the display of Macintosh apples while I sorted through the Honeycrisp apples. Very carefully, I picked out the reddest ones, returning the apples I didn’t want back in their place in the row. This is when, well, all hell broke out…
One of the Macintosh apples slowly toppled downwards towards me. When I reached over to grab it, I accidentally dislodged another apple in the display. Before you could say ‘Johnny Appleseed,’ Macintosh apples were bouncing onto the floor, rolling helter skelter, everywhere! Holy mackinaw!
When I bent down to gather in all the runaway apples, I accidentally backed into a bin of Braeburn’s and away they went! In turn this caused the Cortland’s to come cascading down! Then the Honeycrisp apples joined in! I must have looked like an octopus flailing my arms legs trying to corral them all!
Just like that, Farm Boy’s artfully displayed apples looked like a turnip truck tipped over — okay wrong analogy but you know what I mean! Standing there in the produce department my face was, well, beet red.
There were waayyy too many fallen apples. I couldn’t possibly pick them all up, so I did what anyone would do: I frantically looked around to see if anyone had noticed. Whew! Thankfully, I was alone, so I nonchalantly walked away pretending nothing happened. But there is more…
I was a couple of aisles away over near the fresh tomatoes when one of the wheels on my grocery cart clipped — you guessed it! — an errant apple and sent it careening towards a tilted display of red peppers! I kept walking.
I am one bad apple.
