Doing a supermarket shop is a strangely intimate experience that takes place in a very public place. Depending on what you chuck in your basket, from a box of condoms to several multipacks of Twixes can conjure up all kinds of ideas about your home to the casual onlooker, and give you a weird sense of self-consciousness.
Over on the AskUK subreddit, user Successful-Art-4614 asked this:
What purchase at a supermarket embarrasses you for no reason whatsoever or a pathetic reason?
I am the supermarket shopper in our house and when I go with requests from the family some of the purchases make me feel embarrassed in case someone notices. But for not much reason really! The other day I found myself looking over my shoulder because I’d been sent for cat food, tampons and ice cream and I felt like I was fulfilling some kind of stereotype.
What does it for you?
And the shifty shoppers of Britain chipped in in with their own shameful lists.
1.
‘I’ve only felt this once and it’s because they made a comment. As they were scanning my stuff through they said ‘Wow, you must have a lot for someone so young’, and when I asked what they meant, they said ‘Kids, how many do you have?’ then gestured towards all the boxes of Coco Pops I was buying.
When I told her I don’t have any I just like Coco Pops she gave me the most judgemental look imaginable. I only do self service checkouts now…’
–FlockBoySlim2.
‘I remember a guy I was friendly with at the time was embarrassed because his other half wouldn’t let him buy a bag for life to carry the jumbo pack of bog rolls he’d been tasked with lumping home. He didn’t want to carry them in the open. ‘Nobody will care,’ she apparently said. ‘Everybody uses them.’
According to him, they’d got ten foot outside the shop before the passenger in a passing car leant out the window and yelled ‘HAVE A NICE SHIT, MATE!’ at him, causing half the street to look and laugh.’
–focalac
3.
‘The week before the first lockdown I spotted a woman in Sainsburys with a trolley full of tampons and Cadburys Fruit and Nut. And I thought, ‘There’s a woman with all her ducks in a row.’‘
–FullBodiedRed2000
4.
‘I was buying a cucumber to have in my salad, and condoms, because I was hoping for post-salad sex. My partner called me and asked me to get baby oil and ibuprofen. To the cashier the ibuprofen probably looked like it was for my sore arse.’
–Craft_on_draft
5.
‘I can buy cucumbers without a problem. I can buy condoms without a problem. But the one time I got to the till and realised I had both was the only time in my life I’ve been checkout embarrassed.’
–Nerual1991
6.
‘Always feel like a naughty teen buying pregnancy tests, despite being well into my 30s and taking them every month or so because I’ve got an itinerant cycle and a massive fear of ectopic pregnancy.’
–Relative-Tea3944
7.
‘I felt weird buying a pregnancy test as a 30-year-old with my husband when we were actively trying to conceive and hoping it would be positive.’
–DontBullyMyBread
8.
‘Was on my way to a party and needed to pick up some alcohol but also my friend who I was seeing the next day had asked me if I could get her a pregnancy test as she was embarrassed to buy one, so I checked out two bottles of gin and two pregnancy tests. The woman didn’t look impressed.’
–No_Psychology_8169
9.
‘A few years ago I went to our local supermarket and got wine, tampons and chocolate, and three men in the queue all let me go a head of them, I must have looked pissed off.’
–SwimmingTheme3736
10.
‘I used to live next door to a 24 hour Tesco. One Saturday night I got bored around 10pm and decided to walk over and buy myself a new set of bed linen. It only struck me as I got to the till that the only people who buy sheets at 10pm on a Saturday are probably people who have shit the bed.’
–sleepyvimto
11.
‘I used to cycle to the supermarket to do my weekly shop. Had a rucksack, panniers and rack on the back. One day I was cycling home through the park with a big 18 roll pack of bog roll on the rack, past a group of kids. One shouts out ‘Oi mate, what you going to do with all that bog roll?’
I shouted back ‘Wipe my arse! How do you clean yours?’
All his mates laughed at him, so his attempt to embarrass me backfired.’
–seven-cents
