First-Name Basis At Hy-Vee

I’m now on a first-name basis with the cashiers at Hy-Vee. I first noticed this last week as I was picking up my bag of groceries, when the cashier, handing me the receipt, said in quite a friendly manner, “Have a good day, J.L.” I didn’t think much of it at the time. Maybe she’d overheard someone in line refer to me by name (though there is rarely anyone in line who even knows me, let alone refers to me by name). Maybe she had been a student of mine in the distant past who I had cleansed from my memory (as is my wont). Whatever, it came and went. But then today as I was picking up my bag of groceries, a different cashier, handing me the receipt, again said in quite a friendly manner, “Have a good day, J.L.” This was clearly no coincidence. Something was up, something had changed, this had not happened before. And when I got home, I looked at the receipt and found what it was. Right there on the receipt, beneath the list of Dijon mustard, extra-sharp cheddar, oranges, and yellow-fin tuna, centered and in bold, was my name. So apparently because I pay for my groceries with a credit card, my name is forged on the receipt, a personal identification of purchase for the cashier to call out, a brand that follows me from the register to my car and home. I’m not sure what to make of this, but I find it uneasy, if not a little creepy. We live in a time of personal invasion. Big Brother long ago settled into our lives. I prefer to live as anonymously as I can, to be able to slink into and out of Hy-Vee to buy my mustard and cheese and tuna with a minimum of social interaction. Maybe that’s what I should tell Susan H. – the name of the cashier on my receipt – the next time I go through her line. If that really is her name.

Faux Farmer's Stand

For the past decade or so, up the street from us, in the parking lot of the Hy-Vee Drugstore, there’s been a farmer’s produce stand from a local farm about 30 miles east of here (I've spoken often with the farmer and members of his family). It usually shows up about mid-June, with melons, tomatoes and bell peppers appearing a couple of weeks later, and then around July 4^th, the sweet corn makes its glorious arrival, surviving into late August. This year the stand arrived early, about a month ago. From the beginning it seemed odd. There weren’t only early melons, but also tomatoes and peppers and (how so?) sweet corn. I asked the cashier in the drugstore what the deal was, and he just shrugged his shoulders, indicating his own bafflement (or instruction not to say anything). Then last week, as I was out on my walk, I saw the supposed farmer’s produce stand being stocked by someone from a Hy-Vee catering van. So the “farmer’s produce stand” is actually nothing more than an extension of the Hy-Vee produce aisle pretending to be a farmer’s produce stand. And incredibly, sadly, I see dupes customers buying from the stand, apparently thinking they’re buying from a local farmer, when they could drive a mile down the street and get the same produce, probably for less. And this is nothing more than an example of the growing problem with corporate grocery stores trying to cash in on the various recent local, healthful trends. People buy “organic” in the stores when organic is not necessarily organic, “free range” when it’s not really free range, “natural” when it’s not really natural (a lot of chemicals that you would not want to ingest are “natural”), and so on and on. And they pay premium for it. My hope is that the actual farmer’s stands begin to show up when the local produce actually begins to emerge. And that the Hy-Vee sham shrivels. At the very least, I’m comforted by the emerging zucchinis and cucumbers, and tomato and eggplant flowers that are showing up in our garden. Soon we won’t have to rely on either the mega grocery store or the farmer’s stand. Except for the sweet corn – from the side of the road, a bag of a dozen, honor system, put your dollar in the coffee can.