Thursday, February 21, 2008

Shopping as a Personal Relationship



Going to the supermarket is the pits, wandering up and down aisles with people rushing by.

Food shopping, by contrast, in Argelès is a study in personal relationships. Sure I could throw a box of Lipton tea bags in a shopping cart at Shoppi, but how much better is it to approach the tea and coffee shop and smell the coffee beans roasting. Inside Carlos pushes huge burlap bags closer to the roaster and greets me with a smile.

Although I’m not a coffee drinker, I do keep coffee on hand for my friends, and the odour is tantalizing.
Usually I buy tea from one of his green canisters. We discuss merit, fair trade, etc. before he measures them out into the red bags marked with the name and seals them with a gold band.

His wife, pregnant with her second son, sits at one of the tables. The little boy is playing on the floor. His toys are scattered around between the tables where people can test out which coffee they want to buy.

That’s not shopping, that’s having a human relationship…and I end up with great tea too.

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