Vlons

A small story:

“We need distilled water and ant traps,” I announced to Consort as I grabbed my car keys. He waited, perhaps to see if I would grow more interesting. I did not.

“If you’re going to Target, I need l-“

I cut him off.

“I also am picking up medication,” I added. To anyone but my family, this would have sounded like the world’s most boring non-sequitur, but my family knows what this meant.

“Good luck,” Consort said pleasantly, his laughter almost covered by a cough.

To live in a neighborhood that gentrifies around you is marked by certain external stages. First, the dive bars are suddenly populated by people born in 1996. Pabst Blue Ribbon is still being drunk only now it’s being consumed ironically.

Then come the small boutique stores that appear to sell a single record player, a stuffed ostrich and eel gum from Japan. Once the Boutiques of Great Mystery arrive, it’s only a matter of months before you get your Trader Joes, your Whole Foods, your wonderlands of kombucha.

When I first moved to my neighborhood, certain houses were known for hosting cockfights on weekends — the losing gladiators found in a leaking garbage bag in the street the next morning. We now have hipsters with chickens with names like Lisa Marie and Susan Sontag.

Same poultry, different world.

But not everything you need has to be locally-sourced. Not every object is interesting, or has a story, or is supporting former sex workers in Thailand. Some objects are just dull and need to be cheap. And that was why I was headed to the worst grocery store in Los Angeles.

To protect the innocent, I shall give it a pseudonym.

Let’s call it Vlons.

When my neighborhood was known for bags of dead roosters and no fewer than three gangs fighting for hegemony, Vlons was the only option. The community has changed; Vlons has not. There are four different varieties of Crisco and one of green tea.

If you think of it as a grocery store, it’s depressing. If you think of it as a for-profit business, it’s baffling. There is never more than one single cashier. She is always a trainee. She appears to have never encountered the number three before.

“But, Quinn,” you might reasonably ask, “What happens after she’s trained?”

She is replaced by another trainee. At this point, I assume that once they can ring someone up without crying, they are eaten by the Vlons executives.

Vlons is the answer to the question, “What would the exact opposite of customer service be?” Once, while walking out of their store, my sweater snagged on a nail that was protruding from a beam. I untangled myself and asked the cashier/trainee where the manager was.

She burst into tears.

I finally located the manager, pointed to the hole in my sweater, the nail protruding from the beam. He frowned at it.

“Why,” he finally asked, “Would someone put that there? That seems kind of unsafe.”

“Yes,” I answered levelly, “If only there were someone who could do something about that. A…manager, perhaps.”

I asked for a form to get repaid for my ruined sweater. He disappeared for about a half hour, finally returning with a form that appeared to have gone through the wash in someone’s pants.

“Fill it out, give it to me,” he said.

“How long does it usually take to get a check?” I asked.

He looked surprised.

“A check? I don’t…they never…no.”

Of course.

So why do I go to such an irritating place? Three reasons:

1.They are cheaper than anywhere else,

2. The pharmacist is an angel. Honestly, she’s caught potential drug interactions my doctors had missed and her flu shots are a painless wonder. This is because, as she explains it, “I grew up in a farm vaccinating the cattle. You give a painful shot to a cow, you get kicked.”

3.The Vlons customers.

Once you fully consider the average Vlons customer, you realize this is not a grocery store; this is a play by Ionesco. Every aisle is populated by people doing something you had never considered in your life.

A family of seven, eating a votive candle.

Identical twins, kicking a bag of cat food.

A seven-foot tall woman, juggling bags of onions.

The pharmacy is open eight hours a day. Every single one of those eight hours, the person directly ahead of you will be a person of unimaginable antiquity, with a descendant translating how their medication for anal fissures is less effective than they’d hoped.

There will be pointing.

This, while fascinating, is merely the amuse-bouche for the real show: the checkout line. Crying trainee versus the greatest show on earth. Again, if you think of it as a grocery store, if you have to go to the bathroom, if you are trying to buy perishables, you misunderstand.

This is spectacle.

Just soak it up.

Bask in the tiny Armenian grandmother attempting to purchase something with two unwrapped breath mints and a snatch of a song she remembers from her childhood.

Revel in the person trying to return a sports bra they’d purchased at TJ Maxx.

Rejoice that anal-fissure man ate a candy bar while in the store and wishes to pay for it but refuses to say which candy bar it was.

Did someone just start barbecuing a goat behind you? Of course they did! You’re in Vlons, baby!

I went to Vlons, picked up meds, distilled water, ant traps. The line was reassuringly long but livelier than usual. I looked around. A very tall and very dirty man was wielding a walking stick/staff in a threatening way. I took a covert picture of him, sent it to Consort.

I texted, “Was this the guy you told me about, the one you shooed away from the Bakery last week?”

He texted back in a flash, “Yes.”

I love a crossover episode.