SHOP 'N' DROP
By
Mel Hathorn

It started with the Voortman Cookies. I love Voortman cookies and when I saw that Stop 'n' Shop Supermarket had discontinued them, I asked the store manager why.

"Well, they weren't selling well," he said.

"That's because you had them hidden in the back of the special cheese section." I complained. "No one sees them there." I suppose I made a nuisance of myself. I pleaded and argued, but to no avail. The Voortman cookies were gone.

That was bad enough. On a later trip, I looked for my favorite ice cream, Ben and Jerry's. After searching high and low, I found it hidden on the bottom shelf.

"What!" I asked myself. "Are they going to use this as an excuse to discontinue B&J's too? This is totally unacceptable behavior by Stop 'n' Shop. It's bad enough they took away my cookies, I can't allow them to take away my B&J's too!" That B&J's donate 1% of their profits to preserving the environment, world peace and a variety of charities as well as to the creamy-rich flavor of their ice cream is an additional reason to panic.

It was an emergency! The world was ending! I had to do something! Bending down and pulling out a pint of B&J's, I thought, "I really don't want this flavor." I put it on the top shelf in front of the Hagen Daas. I pulled out another flavor. "Nope, I don't want that one either."

Repeating the process several times, I soon noticed that the Hagen Daas was completely hidden behind the B&J's. Then I noticed that in the process of restocking the B&J's, several Hagen Daas pints had dropped to the floor.

Not wanting to leave a mess, I bent down to pick up the Hagen Daas. "Well, as long as I'm down here," I thought, "I might as well stack them on this empty lower shelf." Soon the shelves of ice cream were reversed. Now B&J had its deserved top shelf. Purchasing one I left.

A few nights later, I returned. Hagen Daas was again on the top shelf and B&J's was on the bottom.

"Stop n Shop doesn't want to learn," I thought. Soon I had again reversed the shelves of ice cream. This went on for several weeks. Then one night when I was doing my duty to preserve the environment and world peace, I heard an angry voice behind me.

"Can I help You!?!" I jumped and turned.

It was the manager. Dressed in a green smock and sporting a tiny trimmed mustache, he looked a cross between one of Santa's elves and Mr. Whipple, the Charmin Toilet Paper man. Was I about to be accosted for squeezing the ice cream?

A look of recognition dawned on his face. "I remember you! Mr. Hatehorn, the Voortman Cookie man!"

"Uh…that's Hathorn…," I answered.

"Yes. But what are you doing?" Earl, the elf asked.

"Oh, I was just trying to make sure that B&J's doesn't suffer the same fate that the Voortman cookies did," I answered.

"Do you know that Hagen Daas pays for that space?"

"Hagen Daas still has that shelf; they are just behind the B&J's," I answered. I went on to say how great it was that Hagen Daas was contributing to World Peace by sharing its shelf space.

The manager didn't seem impressed. He warned me not to do that again. He told me that he was considering banning me from the store. When he realized that any ban would require twenty-four/seven monitoring, he changed his mind. Later as I thought about it I realized I should have told him that I was making a political statement by replacing the Hagen Daas with B&J's. It really boiled down to a first Amendment issue.

Emboldened by my thoughts, I went in late one night to replace the Hagen Daas. My guess was right. The store manager had left for the day. With a happy grin, I did the deed.

A few weeks later, I went in to do the deed only to find out that Ben and Jerry's now shared shelf space with the Hagen Daas. Unfortunately, I recently made a disturbing observation while at Shaws (another supermarket) tonight. They had moved the Voortman cookies to the back of the store. Hmm…