God bless this wonderful world of ours. This time of the year we get our grapes from Chile. I mean, we all talk about going green, conserving energy and being good stewards to Mother Earth’s resources.. until it comes time to fill refrigerated container ships the size of football fields with little green balls of fruity sugar. Then said balls can travel the oceans until reaching a port of call where burly men with heavy machinery load diesel guzzling temperature controlled trucks that crisscross this great land of ours delivering mother nature’s perfect sweet shot (I purposefully neglected to mention the last leg of the journey involving distribution centers, unloading of the initial trucks, loading of new trucks..). All this to bring the goodness of Gaea to your local foodstore, of course Gaea had to be brutally assaulted to make this happen, but that’s just the view of one conservative leaning Independent thought thunker. Me, I’ll eat a fucking apple.
But.. but, add an earthquake and the process described above goes right out the window. The earthquake that hit Chile was so massive it moved the earth off its axis by almost 2 seconds. Our days are now 2 seconds off, and that may be permanent. That is HUGE, but not so huge as to daunt the will and general gall of my customers.
For the past 2 days I and my fellow employees have had to explain this scenario to hundreds (yes, hundreds) of old people. And they are not buying it. See, my company made the inadvertent mistake of featuring the grapes in our flyer. Life decisions are made based on this flyer. When you are 82, on 20 different medications and have a monthly income after expenses equaling $40 then you better bet your ass that the reason you take a trip outside the 300 square foot closet that will define the end of your years better be a good one. So the hordes of the nearly dead descended on my store looking for cheap grapes. And no grapes were to be found. Oh, the impotent rage and anger. Many a walker and cane shook in the air over the past several days, I’ll tell you that for free.
I’ll describe one conversation I had with a couple. I think they were Spanish, Cuban perhaps, both way up there in the years. The wife pinions me as I round an aisle asking me where the grapes are. I tell her that there are no grapes, that our grapes come from Chile and the earthquake has made delivery impossible. Then, for the next 2 minutes we go back and forth determining how and why the grapes will not be delivered. The husband would nod his head sagely as if he understood everything, then look to his wife as if she should absorb the knowledge he held osmotically only to see her assail my ramparts yet again searching out the grapes. When I looked back at him his face would be a blank slate, I guess reset by his wife’s emotional attack (yes, we are about talking grapes). Finally, after several exchanges he understood my position well enough that he helped me argue with his wife:
Me: “I know the grapes are featured in the ad, but the earthquake in Chile happened after the ad was released. We do not have the grapes”
Husband: “They don’t have the grapes”
Wife: “OK, I understand”
Me: “OK, thank you, I’m sorry we don’t have the grapes”
Wife: “OK, no problem. You will have grapes tomorrow?”
At this point my patience is wearing thin. I have stuff to do and have spent twice the normal amount of time explaining the situation to them. So, I end the conservation emphatically:
“No, mam. There will be no grapes. Not tomorrow, maybe not next month, maybe not next year. No more grapes.”
Who knows, maybe I helped Mother Earth today, maybe I turned a couple of grape eaters into apple lovers.