An adventure that became a dud

A year ago today, I went on what I called “A mini-adventure”. The title was tongue-in-cheek, because it was about a trip to a nearby part of Hamilton I’d never spent any time in. I went there for the very specific reasons I talked about in that post, but, what happened next?

It turned out that I went back to that shopping area a few months later and had a very bad experience: I went into the NZ Post agent there and the woman sitting at the till completely ignored me and sat watching videos on her phone. I walked out after a few minutes (I stayed a bit longer than I normally would’ve just to see if she ever acknowledged my presence, but she never did). I just wanted to ask her what time the letter boxes were emptied (vandals had torn the stickers off, possibly not the same ones who graffitied them) because I needed to post my ballot in the Local Government Elections. I took my chances and posted it (there are very few boxes around any more, since few people post anything anymore).

I decided I might as well pop in the Countdown while I was there, just to see what they had. The store was small, very dark, and much of the stuff they carried (frozen food in particular) was aimed at the lower-socioeconomic clientele of the area. The beer and wine aisle was extensive and well-stocked, I noticed. There appeared to be anti-theft barriers at the checkouts (to slow down shoplifters, I guessed).

I read on Stuff recently that Countdown is closing that location because it’s old, too small, and the building needs unspecified earthquake upgrades. Local shopkeepers said the “real reason” was how much they were losing due to theft. Whatever, it’s the only supermarket in the area, and to get to another location people would have to drive (if they have a car…) or take a bus—and bus service in much of Hamilton is pretty bad. So, that food store I mentioned last year will probably pick up some customers, and the poor people in the area will be doing it a bit tougher in already very hard times.

Last November, the bottle shop (“liquor store” in Americanese) that had been in the shopping area for a decade lost its license, as the Stuff article put it, because of “its ‘vulnerable and deprived’ neighbourhood, employment record, and police and health concerns.” Among other things, objectors felt it might create a “relapse risk to nearby residents in alcohol and drug treatment”. I bought things from that bottle shop one of the two times I was at that shopping area (I forget which time).

I didn’t go back to that butcher. It turned out that the meat I bought a year ago had a lot of water, and I ended up throwing out some chicken I bought because it went off quickly, before the use-by date. Maybe that was just an isolated unfortunate bad experience, but I’ll never know: I’m not driving there just to save a few cents per kilogram on the meat I rarely buy when I wouldn’t get anything else at that shopping centre—I may as well just buy everything at a supermarket. I said in my post last year:

[Shopping at that butcher] would probably erase all or most of the savings if I wasn’t buying other things at that shopping centre, too, especially because I eat very little meat. If I was feeding a family—or even two people—it would make more sense to make a special trip. Still, other shops in that shopping area may provide the rest of what I need in a routine shopping trip, and, if so, it could be worth stopping at the butcher, maybe stocking up and freezing stuff.

Clearly, things didn’t turn out that way.

When I got back to my car the last time I went to the shopping area, I rang NZ Post to complain about their agent, and while my call was very important to them, the wait time was estimated at 29 minutes. I hung up and drove home, in a rather unpleasant mood. Leo’s happy greeting when I got home fixed that.

I have another close-to-home mini-adventure planned for after the current school holidays end (for good reason), but more about that later. That mini-adventure one year ago today ended up being a bust, but I’d never have found that out if I hadn’t gone there. Now I know. On to the next adventure.