Kristin Slater: Simple things can be costly considerations

The grocery store doors slide open. Exactly 15 minutes to get the shopping done to be able to get back to the house before my husband has to leave for work. I just need something to eat tonight. I’m a woman on a mission.

A mission that immediately gets stopped, or at least slowed down, by a woman standing in front of me. She’s honestly blocking the doorway. Quite a feat considering the doorway is a double door kind of store entrance and this woman is probably around five feet tall and looks like she weighs about as much as a good sized 12-year-old.

“Good afternoon.” She’s staring right at me, obviously also a woman on a mission. She gestures to a box standing on the floor next to her that’s half-full of various cereals. “We’re collecting cereal today to help feed local school children during the summer months.”

I frown at the boxes. “So, you send them home the last day of school with a bunch of cereal boxes to help them survive until fall?” I’m imagining my own first grader trying to carry 10 full size boxes of cereal for any amount of time. Not likely to go well.

“No, we stock up local food shelters so parents can go there and get food when they need it, but cereal is one of the most popular items, and something most kids can get ready themselves while parents might be at work or busy with younger ones.”

“Oh, that’s nice.” I smile at the box of boxes; the woman smiles back at me. Apparently, she is appeased now that she got to say what she wanted to say so I pass her to get a cart.

Back to my own mission.

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Pick up chicken, search for that quinoa stuff that’s supposed to be healthier than rice, remember my daughter’s love of cream cheese and head over to the dairy section. The whole time I’m still thinking about the cereal.

So, when I see a display stand full of cereals placed near the milk, I walk over to it.

In the wise words of my 7-year-old: What the Farts?

It’s almost six stinking dollars for one box of regular cereal!

I drop my hand from the box of little chocolate balls of rice I was about to pick up. That’s a lot of money for cereal. How expensive is this stuff now?

I’m about to walk away, thinking that’s too much to pay for cereal, but I stop mid-turn. If that seems like too much to me, how much is it to a struggling parent? I imagine what this price for cereal would have done to me just a year ago. Before I was working full-time, before my husband’s new job, when we were surviving on almost nothing and waiting for the workman’s compensation payments to start after my husband was hurt at work.

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That was a hard time.

I’m glad I’m not going through that time anymore.

What if someone else is having a hard time right now?

I grab the box of cereal.

I go to the U-scan. The person who is in charge of making sure people don’t just walk out the door with their stuff is talking to someone. “They usually start out at $10.60, but since I’ve got experience, I got to start off 40 cents higher.”

$10.60? An hour?

I look at the almost $6 box of cereal in my hand. The store employees have to work half an hour for one box of cereal.

Even this lady who got to start off higher.

As I walk out, the box of cereal is gone, another employee is pushing the now full box of boxes to the store office. The small door-blocking woman is putting everything her small body has into pulling a new empty one into its place. I hand her the box. She looks at me, then at the box in her hand, then at me again, “Thank you.”

She puts my box and three others into the bottom of her new, bigger box.

It’s a good thing there was more than one person on a mission here.

— Community Columnist Kristin Slater is an Allegan County resident. Contact her at kristinslater@yahoo.com.

This article originally appeared on The Holland Sentinel: Kristin Slater: Simple things can be costly considerations