Things we had forgotten... part 1: the grocery store

We went back to Alberta, Canada this past week for my grandmother's 100th birthday party. In doing so, we spent some time with our families and were reintroduced to a few things we had forgotten about life in Canada.

We went grocery shopping and were reintroduced to the common courtesy of saying "excuse me", "thank you" and the stereotypical Canadian "sorry". It doesn't seem like much to use those few words when dealing with others in a grocery store but it almost made our jaws hit the floor the first time someone moved their cart out of our way blocking the aisle and said "sorry", or when we moved our cart out of someone's way and they said "thank you". Little words but when you haven't heard them very often at all in the last few years, it sure has a big impact on you when you do hear them.

The grocery store visit was even more eye opening in other ways, most namely, the prices now. Something that we routinely buy in the US for $8 was $12 and then we also got to add on $0.10 each bottle (6 in total) for bottle deposit and $0.01 each bottle for enviro/recycle fee, bringing the total cost up to almost $13 for the same thing as our usual $8. Oh and then, don't forget to add in the now lower US to Canadian dollar exchange rate making Canada far from the "cheap" shopping of years ago.

The grocery stores look very similar from the outside and from the inside but once you add in the different attitudes of the people in them and the bigger price labels on the shelves, they are very far apart in terms of being similar.

If we can add in a little more common courtesy of patrons in grocery stores around these parts, it would make grocery shopping such a better experience. Don't get me wrong, we do see some but not nearly enough or as firmly ingrained in the general public as it still seems to be back in Canada. It was a good reminder to us to remember to continue to use our "thank you"s, "excuse me"s and "sorry"s... for we have also gotten lax in doing so and maybe if we keep doing it, it might rub off on another and so on and so on...

Part 2... the differences in the credit card systems