Shopping here stresses me out
Seriously...I don't know if it's because people need jobs or what...but the kind of jobs people have here! I mentioned a long time ago...over a year ago, I know it was, that at this one place where I had my hair cut a few times, there was one person whose job it was to just stand there and wipe off any stray freshly-cut-off hairs from my face with this big sponge. I've yet to see a self-service gas station in this country. One of my friends explained it to me by saying that the only natural resource Korea has as a country is its people.
So this translates into something tantamount to utter chaos at the grocery store. First of all, the meat section is (for me) a panic attack just waiting to happen. There's all these little islands with varieties of already-seasoned/marinated meat. For every section of meat, there's a very loud guy in a white suit, whose job is it to advertise his particular kind of meat, and then put it in a bag, weigh it, and put the price on for you. Seriously, these guys spend their entire work days bellowing. All of them. At the same time. The store closest to my current apartment isn't nearly as bad as the one I used to go to when I lived with Natalie. Seriously, at that store, I'd just sneak into this one corner of the meat part and grab what I could, even though that meant I bought Australian beef, which is more expensive. It was worth it to avoid the ten-auctions-going-on-at-once kind of racket.
Well, yesterday I went to the store to buy some feminine hygiene products (my apologies to you squeamish men who don't want to hear about it) and some facial cleanser. Well, all the different brands have these representatives working in these sections in the store. I walked up to the feminine hygiene aisle, and was surrounded by these two Korean women who were intent on helping me. (And for those of you who think two is too small a number of people to be surrounded by, you've not been shopping in a Korean store on the weekend.) And you know, it wouldn't have been nearly so bad, had they not pulled out this sample phamplet/book thing. It was the size of a small poster, and had all these different pads stuck to it. I think they genuinely expected me to point to the kind I wanted to buy. I'm not at all embarrassed at buying such items, but with this huge paper of various pads stuck in front of my face, and the aisle in question being one of the main ones...I was probably more surprised than anything else, but there was definitely some "Uhh...stop it, put that away!" feelings in there. So I just ignored them, pushed past them, and got the kind I wanted (without, I might add, having to point to the poster o' pads).
Then I headed to the all-things-soap section. There were more product representatives than shoppers in this area - Dove, Neutrogena, and a whole slew of Korean brand names I can't remember. Here all but one of the women didn't help me (because they might have to speak English, and that's embarrassing or something). It was a different woman but the same product that caught me before at the same store in the past. She was most helpful, I must say. I found both items I was looking for, and she gave me loads of stuff for "service" (translation: free stuff/incentive/mild bribery). The part I found most humorous was when she was telling me the instructions for the face mask I bought. The only part I could understand were the numbers (15 and 25, FYI), but I don't know if she was saying "Leave this on for 15-25 minutes" or "At 15 minutes, your face will start to slowly melt, and at 25 minutes you will die." I did use one of the masks last night, and left it on for as long as I could stand it (which ended up being slightly less than 10 minutes, actually...it felt too slimy). Face and life still intact.
The moral of the story is...shopping here stresses me out. If it's not the insane crowds, it's the maddening people who come to an abrupt stop right in front of me, and then walk off and leave their carts in the middle of the aisle where I can't get around them. If it's not either of those, it's being mobbed by product representatives, or feeling like a nervous chihuahua in the meat department. I long for the day when I can go wander around Wal-Mart for hours and not be yelled at, literally pushed around, have my ankles crushed by the cart of the oblivious woman behind me, or hounded by women holding up posters of pads. Ahh...good ol' Western indifference.
