this morning, i was one of the first people to walk into trader joe's when it opened for the day.

lately, i've been shopping there instead of safeway, and it's been such a nicer experience.

i've been cooking a lot more recently, which means i'm buying groceries more frequently. i've started to appreciate how much the experience of grocery shopping matters when you're doing it several times a week.

i used to go to safeway for most of my groceries. it's a regular grocery store, so you'd expect shopping there to be pretty straightforward. you walk in, find what you need, pay for it, and leave. except so much stuff is locked away.

you'll find everyday products (and ice cream) sitting behind locked cabinets, and you have to press a button to call an employee to unlock them. sometimes someone shows up within a minute. other times, you stand there waiting for someone who never comes.

there's something humiliating about standing in front of a shelf, staring at a product you can clearly see, waiting for someone to give you permission to buy it. it's such a waste of time, too. you could have picked up the product and been halfway through your shopping by the time someone finally arrives.

i don't even regularly buy most of the things they keep locked up. just seeing those cabinets makes me sad. it makes the whole store feel unwelcoming, like everyone who walks in is a potential thief. it hurts your soul a little.

and the worst part is that i think so much of this comes from decisions made far upstream. when we fail to prosecute theft and enforce laws consistently, businesses eventually have to find ways to protect themselves. they start locking up their inventory, hiring security guards, and treating ordinary shopping like a security problem.

the consequences of those decisions eventually reach everyone, including people who have never stolen anything in their lives.

i understand why safeway does this. shoplifting costs businesses money, and they have to protect their inventory. i just wish we lived in a society where stores could trust people to pick something off a shelf and pay for it.

trader joe's feels completely different. the stores are smaller, the shelves are easy to browse, and the employees seem happy to be there. i love that they have their own products, too. there's always something interesting to try, and the whole store feels like someone has put some thought into what they're selling.

there's something nice about being able to walk into a grocery store, take your time looking around, discover something new, and leave feeling good about the experience.

grocery shopping is such an ordinary part of life. now that i'm cooking more often, it's become something i look forward to. it honestly makes me feel so grateful to live somewhere where i can walk into a store and find such an abundance of food from all over the world. there's so much variety, and i get to choose what i want to cook and eat every day. it's a really wonderful thing that we get to take for granted.