It’s after 10PM and I’m heading home from dance class. I’m hungry, but don’t really feel like stopping at a restaurant for dinner. Fast food…pass.
After doing a mental scan of what’s in my fridge – next to nothing – I decided to make a stop at my neighborhood supermarket, the Safeway on NE MLK & NE Ainsworth.
If you live in an area where there isn’t a 24-hour grocery store and/or want more options than what can be bought at the Plaid Pantry, then you’re probably familiar with the mad dash to get in and out of the supermarket before closing time. In my case, the Safeway near my home closes at 11PM.
After getting off the bus, I made my way into the store. The security guard greeted me with a sleepy “hello” as I grabbed a basket. Although it wasn’t as crowded as say a Saturday afternoon, I was not alone in my quest for late-night-ish sustenance. Sure, there were folks getting simple items like beer, chips and salsa, but there were also people doing full-on shopping for groceries.
If there’s any downside to shopping during the hour before a store closes, it’s waiting in one of the two open checkout lines along with 10 or more other people. Everyone always seems to migrate to the checkout line at the same time at that hour. Forty dollars later – lunch for Thursday and Friday, plus those cookies were calling my name, I swear – I had had my groceries in hand and, finally, headed home.
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I would agree. The only downside is the long line. There are many upsides to shopping late night or even early morning if it is 24hr. No one in the aisles. You can weave around with your cart like your drunk. They may have just stocked the shelves, so you get first dibs.
My only other challenge is that it is Safeway. More expensive than my normal store.
That’s another surprising thing I encountered when I moved here from Oklahoma. Back home, most everything grocery store-ish is 24 hours. Plus we have QuikTrip which is almost like a supermarket, but they keep decent food out 24 hours a day. Of course, we have Wal-Mart and pretty much every one is either a 24-hour Super Center, or 24 hour in general.
I would figure that a “small” state like Oklahoma would be like here in Oregon. It’s rather shocking to see just how much stuff does keep some vague form of “business hours.” The fact that Fred Meyer’s isn’t 24 hours is baffling.
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