Friday evening at the supermarket

It always starts from an ending. This time it starts from Friday evening. The working week has exhausted its power and each of us rushes for the supermarket. Usually it means to shop for a single meal or for something more. Dinner and breakfast. Few use the cart. The majority chooses one of those green plastic baskets.

Outside the sun set a couple of hours ago. Inside there is a light without time. White and surgical. Along the display stands, the persons unveil a certain confusion. It’s them, the objects and the commodities that come close to perfection. They’re colored, smooth and they shine. They seem endless. They tower in their compartments. Chicken legs, thin slices of calf, pats of butter, countless types of yogurt, fresh pasta and packaged hams. There is a background noise that you hear when you’re near fresh foods. It’s the motors of the refrigerators that keep in life those semblances of food. It’s a deaf noise that embraces everything.

All of us, on the contrary, are undecided. Almost frightened by the presence of those packed delights. Disorientated. Intimidated. Everyone gazes at those shiny and bright shapes and you wonder. As though, a moment before eight in the evening it’s inevitable to lose the sense of another purchase. The purchases at this stage seem to be a melancholy act. A woman gazes at a package of sweet croissants like they were prohibited food. Perhaps she’s here because she isn’t able to stay in the empty rooms of her house. Another woman tries to cram the bread into a full basket. The things don’t seem to want to fit in however. According to the data of an investigation by the Bocconi University, in the first two months of 2007 the purchases in supermarkets have diminished by 2.1%. In the same period, the perceived inflation has increased by a great amount (nearly 9%). The promotions, says the research, stimulate even less additional sales. They say that "impulsive" purchases, in these spaces without time, are in a constant slump.

In the queue someone brings with them, all the doubts concerning the few things they have taken. Others are smiling at each other. As if in the end, during their wait, a kind of relief arrived. Like survivors of a tragedy, we could try to exchange our account of a past, by now, left behind. The boy at the cash desk, still working at this time in the evening, takes with his hands object after object. He passes them over a horizontal slot and waits for the ping that records the price on the bill of who now is in a hurry to fill his bag. As if in that plastic bag were the only useful objects for trying to head home.