Having to get public transport must be really difficult. I feel traumatised when I have to go grocery shopping with a car, but there again I am male

I do like Superstore but it is so damn big and clearly no good for you if you can't get what you want.

oh, I don't mind using transit. I always carry a book with me, so I can read.

But it does get difficult if you have to carry several bags of groceries.

I must admit I tend to get a taxi back because I go grocery shopping once every 2-3 weeks and have heaps and heaps of stuff - far more than I could manage on my own.

Kudos to you for getting the bus or similar!

When living in London I used to do groceries every day ro every other day just because I had to haul it back myself. Every 2-3 weeks I'd splurge out and do a Sainsburys delivery, when I needed to stock up on stuff. (Yeah I know Grocery Gateway delivers, I just never really think of them, I think with the car now I do big enough shops that delivery never seems worth it anymore!)

So a week or so ago I had someone coming to the door saying they were with whatever company it was (the name escapes me) who carry local, organic, "happy" meat and would we like a free sample to try. So I said sure. She said great, someone would be around tomorrow with a sample. The next day they called me to make sure I was home, then said someone would be by. The chap came, seemed nice enough. Started talking about how their plans work, different packages worth of meat, a selection of different cuts and such, then he asked if my husband was home as it's easier to talk to both of us. Um, what? No, he's at work... "Oh, we usually prefer to speak to both couples at once." "Why??" "Well, we only have flexibility on price on the first visit."

Okay, this pisses me off. We went through this last year with DirectBuy as well and is an immediate red flag. I said that my husband wasn't home, I wouldn't be making any decisions then, and even if he was we wouldn't be committing on the spot, we like to do some research and compare with grocery bills etc to see if it's worth it. Blah blah blah. I asked him if he had some kind of pricing sheet I could look at to compare, and he said you can't really work out the various prices of individual meats because you buy a year's worth at once and it's a mix of different things. Yeah, okay. So I shut that down.

A week later someone else came by offering a similar type of thing, but they just sell meat by the box, so you can buy a box of salmon or a box of beef or whatever. He also explained that prices fluctuate as market prices fluctuate, which is fair enough, especially for fish. Fine. So I asked him to give me a few indicative prices. I nearly crapped myself, lol.

A box of salmon, 2.2kg pre-cut and packaged into about 12-13 portions, was going to cost $125. SERIOUSLY?! I buy fresh salmon from Costco for $22/kg, and he's charging more than double that?! Is it freaking golden salmon?! The box of Halibut was $150 for a 2.6kg box of 15 portions. Absolute madness.

The guy was nice, but that was just completely bonkers.

now there's a business... pre sell door to door, then go buy it at costco, do the quick flip - what a nice profit eh!

Bus there, taxi back but my timing means the saving always exceeds the taxi fare. Money saved on 10 bottles of pepsi...that's the taxi more than covered. Ditto large pack of bog paper - buy two packs, there's your taxi fare another time, perhaps even going when you don't want to wait at the bus stop when it's cold

Wow Snooks, that is just so very wrong. You wonder how many lonely people who might be mentally challenged fall for it and get hammered financially. That's just horrid.

Canada is the first country I have ever lived where people ask if my husband is home...it gets me sooo aggravated, it's happened a few times.

Do they say husband or head of the household?

or...'is the home owner available'

I suppose that's better than "is your daddy home?"

Do you get much of that?

I also can't stand those massive stores like SS or Costco. I get overwhelmed by too many variables and I can't figure out which ones are relevant so just usually give up and leave with nothing completed.

That's not true of Costco. They have one brand of everything so shopping is simple; the list says "unsalted butter", that's unsalted butter there, put butter in cart. No need to look for another butter option, there's no second butter brand.

Same with lobsters, dog beds, pineapples, detergent, kayaks, orange juice, Toblerone, socks, saucepans, necklaces, giant televisions and whatever else you went in to get. If the list says "OJ" there's no option to dither over concentrate vs. real, pulp vs. no pulp, major brand or store brand, actual juice or polymer substitute. There's just orange juice.

My answer to that question is always

"Why?"

Then I proceed to tell them that I make my own decisions, thank you very much - and then I say (without giving them a chance to say anything more..)

"Goodbye, please leave my premises"

aaaaaaand shut the door in their face.

I think I'm overwhelmed by the magnitude of it all, of the racks and rows of bewildering abundance of quantity. I have no ethical stand on the store, its just not for me.