Rant inbound.
You want to know the worst part about Covid? I mean, besides the millions of people who died, obviously. Okay, so maybe the second worst thing about Covid. It's that we lost all our late night store hours. It used to be (or "used to could be" for fellow Texans) if I got a late night craving (hankerin') for some Peanut Butter Crunch, I could pop down to the local Kroger, as long as it was before 1am.
I love shopping late at night. There is no better retail experience than grocery store shopping around midnight. Why? I'm glad you asked. 1) There's almost no one in the store. The aisles are blissfully clear of other shoppers, even if you have to dodge the stray employees stocking the shelves. But they're minding their own business and don't pay attention to you, so it's great. 2) The people that are there are orders of magnitude more interesting than daytime shoppers. They dress weird, or they're buying weird things. Or both -- they're wearing pajama pants and a tank top, buying three types of Gatorade and a rotisserie chicken at midnight. Not to mention the workers. Like the single, goateed older man with the gravely voice who's almost always taking a smoke break when I'm there, who's in charge of manning the self-checkout. You just know that dude has a bunch of Rush concert tees in his closet and a vintage Trans- Am in some state of disrepair in his garage. He doesn't get flustered when your barcode doesn't scan. He just ambles over, hits a couple of buttons and says something like "yeah, these machines really hate crunchy peanut butter", then checks his watch to see if it's time for another cig. That guy fucking rocks, and his demeanor doesn't match the day shift.
3) (Yeah, that last paragraph got long.) The vibe is fucking amazing. The fluorescent lights hit softer. The music from the overhead speakers is muted and lacks the advertisements than run in the daytime. Everything moves a little slower, like everyone and everything in the store is kind of half asleep and just... coexisting. It's just you, the cart (that you hand-selected without a wobbly wheel), and the freedom to wander around the store at your own pace without anyone bothering you. No crowds, no noise, no stress. Just the muted hum of the fridges, the occasional squeak of your sneakers on the tile, and the feeling that you're in on a secret that the rest of the world forgot.
But not anymore. Covid fucking robbed us of that. I told my kids I'd make waffles in the morning, so I hopped in the car at 11:10, drove down the street, and was greeted by a mostly empty parking lot, save for a couple of teenaged employees milling around outside on their phones, waiting for a pickup to take them home. Okay, so Kroger closes at 11 on weekdays now. I get it. I don't live in a college town. It's Plano fucking Texas, king of the 90s and 2000s suburbs. I don't expect every grocery store we have to be open past midnight. So I grab my phone, do a quick map search for "grocery stores", and tick the box for "Open Now". What do I get? An Indian grocery store called "Food Paradise", a Crest Foods down in Richardson, and a Winco 25 minutes away in Carrollton. The Crest Foods seemed odd, because that's an Oklahoma-based discount chain, and the location is near an office park where I did some counselling once. But I was out, and it was late, and I was enjoying it. Let's do this. I drive over there, follow the turn by turn, and wind up... in the parking lot of the office park where I did some counselling that one time. Apparently "Crest Foods Inc" is a) not a Crest grocery store, b) the corporate headquarters for some lone franchise business, and c) definitely not open past 11pm.
Fuck Covid. There's not a single grocery store open past 11pm on weekdays in all of Plano. Apologies to the good people at the East Asian Food Paradise, but not even you guys are open. The hours on Apple Maps are wrong, so even you guys aren't slinging lentils this late.
So I'll go back to Kroger in the morning. I'll set my alarm, I'll drive on the suburban streets, and face the morning grocery crowd like something approaching a functioning adult. I'll buy my waffle mix under the harsh glare of the 9am fluorescents, because that's what we do now. Because the world shrank. Covid robbed us of the midnight grocery run and the calm of empty aisles. All that's left is the 9am chaos, a travel mug of lukewarm coffee, and the vague feeling that we lost something we didn't even know we'd miss.
But hey -- at least the kids get waffles.
