As a nighttime employee of WCMF and a member of the CMF nighttime workforce, I pretty much live my life outside of CMF after work… I do everything late. I party late. I cook late and eat late. I watch TV late.  I stay up WAAAYYY too late.  And, of course… I do my grocery shopping late.

Living in the Park Ave. / East Ave. area in Rochester, I usually shop at the East Ave. Wegmans.  Grocery shopping after midnight can have its disadvantages like the deli and seafood departments being closed and a lot of the prepared food is not available. However, shopping late at night can afford you some amazing opportunities.

A couple of cool things:

Barely anyone there.

Much better parking, which is definitely an advantage in bad weather.

No lines to wait in - especially behind people who STILL haven’t figured out how to use their shoppers club or credit cards yet (what century is this???)

While you’re there, you pretty much have the aisles to yourself. Most of them freshly re-stocked. Sweet.

Also, no geriatrics. Most really old people do their shopping MUCH earlier in the day and have been asleep for hours by midnight. I don’t need to tell you how frustrating it can be trying to navigate a large shopping cart around these charming but rather oblivious characters.

The best part of grocery shopping at night… The women! There are a lot of single chicks who shop late — restaurant employees, bartenders, college students, and other after dark types.

Usually, these females are not all hootchie’d up but are much more casual. In their sweats, doing their shopping after work, hair in a pony tail, wearing flip flops. You get the idea. In other words, no pretense (with the possible exception of the Pittsford Wegmans. Obvious profiling is always going on there.)

You actually get to see the real person —  the person you’d eventually see anyway if you actually got something going — not the dolled-up night club version (not that there’s anything wrong with that. Ooh la la!)

So if you dread the weekly drain of your personal time, the inevitable test of your patience, and you feel like checking out some eye candy too… Do your grocery shopping later… MUCH later.  

See ya there after hours…

Big Marc