You know what really grinds my gears?

Articles like this one from Reuters tend to get me a bit flustered and frustrated, I have already deleted my initial rant and started over to try and focus my issues.

The article is about men who do food shopping and how they essentially can not handle the intricacies of a supermarket. Well, I am a man who does supermarket shopping and I have no problem with a supermarket.

I guess my biggest problem with this article, and more so with the research, is how much is left out and the implications that are being made based on the vague research.

The research shows an increase in men who have gone to the supermarket in the last 3 months. Can someone find me a family that does supermarket shopping once every 3 months? How about once a month? While living in a small apartment in New York means I am going to the supermarket probably slightly more frequently then your average supermarket goer, going to the supermarket once in 3 months implies to me that someone is being sent on an errand rather then doing the regular shopping. So, yes, slightly more then half had been there in the past week, but I don’t want to know when they were last at a supermarket, I want to know how frequently they go.

Of the men who “forego buying rather than risk purchasing a substitute for an item on the grocery list” how many of them actually do any of the cooking? How many made up that grocery list that they are using? And what is the “risk” of substituting?

Then there is this: “a tool to help with efficiency is the Shopping Buddy, a wireless computer on shopping carts at Ahold NV’s Stop & Shop stores in the Northeast that alerts shoppers to certain items they might want, among other features, using information from shopper loyalty cards.” How is that helpful? Especially if you are going into a supermarket with a shopping list? I don’t need my shopping cart to tell me I have purchased yogurt before and that it is now on sale. That is not helpful in deciphering a shopping list.

Then there was this quote: “Men also tend to bristle at the overwhelming number of choices in grocery aisles, with the cereal aisle being one prime example,” Putnam said. “One guy I thought was going to have a nervous breakdown in the cereal aisle.” Yes, clearly this guy often goes shopping for himself and his family.

If you are on the verge of a nervous breakdown choosing cereal, maybe you’ve got slightly more serious problems in life and should seek help.

I find articles and research like this demeaning. It fuels stereotypes. If you go into a study with a foregone conclusion, you will be able to find that you are right each and every time. What need is there to make a supermarket more convenient for men who only go there once every 3 months? Don’t try to convince me that adding electronic gadgets to shopping carts will make it more enticing for men to shop when really all it will do is push the current sale items at the supermarket.

And lastly, if you are having that much trouble choosing a cereal, just go with Raisin Bran, cause really, who doesn’t like Raisin Bran?