LoseCo.

Last week i fell into the grips of a WinCo Foods in Longview, Washington. It didn't help matters that i was severely sleep-depraved and on the verge of collapse due to hunger. I sadly followed my cousin inside the automatic jaws of the front entrance. One of the cart collectors was bringing in fifty carts; her metal caravan was led by herself and the rear brought up by an automated 'short circuit' with a blinking light. I'd never seen anything like it...

I immediately felt familiar as i entered the store. WinCo has been popping up everywhere alongside Ross, Starbucks, DollarTree, Home Depot and Target throughout the West. Every store is designed exactly the same, with the exact same products and the exact same music playing overhead. I was marvelling at this homogenized world lit by an overwhelming voltage of ultraviolet lighting, while simultaneously trying to avoid being hit by a cart. Despite the incredibly widened aisles for 'economy-size' everything (including the customers), one needs to hold a wary eye to avoid being run over. It reminds me of playing that old game Frogger on Atari. Trying to cross these streets and intersections without being crushed.

So i was wandering about, checking the deals, and trying to make the time pass quickly while my cousin filled his cart. I began noticing the outrageous prices that no ma and pa store could ever compete with. And then admist the disgust, some sort of quasi-shame for ever having shopped there emerged. I found chicken for .25 cents a pound (not on sale), perhaps dog-food grade but it looked normal. Boxes of Post cereal for a buck, all sorts of out-of-season produce for under in-season prices. Apples the size of softballs, bell peppers of electric christmas colors, chard with ears like skunk cabbage, and avocados for fifty cents a pop. Fifty fuckin' cents!

I couldn't take it anymore, i needed a drink. So i ran to the wine and beer to find endcaps of bullshit wine for pennies and decent wine for pocket change. Domestic beer giveaways and ungodly priced imports. It would be like pulling into a chevron today and finding gas costs 79 and 9/10 a gallon (the first price i remember seeing as a kid).

This isn't winning people! We are not winning here at WinCo. I was feeling a little foreboding and despondent and felt like shouting this ananity. Deciding it was time to leave i began weaving through the customers and their bereft mountains of stock. Approaching the sunlight, passing through the sliding doors, a great weight was lifted. If only there was a place like this for illicit drugs and other paraphanelia. I would love to check a shaker of blow, some various tablets with bin numbers written on dime bags, and a book of stamps. I think i'd be a club card member at that place and i'd still bring my own bags.