Cue every slow walker ever
Your man’s pattern seems inefficient, why would I go twice through the same alley when I can grab stuff on both side with my 2-meter wide arm span ?
The way my brother in law describes his ADHD does not include terms like laser focused.
Trust me if its ADHD you will get hyper focused on something you are doing and ignore everything. Things like eating, drinking and going to toilet. I also go to the store and get what I need and GTFO.
Think more along the lines of "Extreme focus on something wildly unrelated to what you are supposed to be doing that is incredibly critical right now.
Hyperfocus.
I don’t have ADHD (I think), but when I dont browse all the, aisles I will come with that one thing we needed. Only to find out the next morning during my shower, I have been trying to squeeze out toothpaste of a tube that was basically empty 3 days ago. I browse all the aisles because I don’t want to come back and remember I forgot something.
My local supermarket decided to organize certain health/pharmacy items into a separate section on one end of the store. It has a totally different design, different floors, different lighting, and a different color scheme.
Now when I go to the supermarket, I chronically forget to pick up things like shampoo, toothpaste, and over-the-counter medicines, because they’re all stored in that end that I don’t typically walk through. It’s like on some level, my brain considers it a different store. Unless I wrote a list to remind myself that I need something from that section, I’m probably not going to wander into there.
I bet some C-suite thought they were really clever to make a special little “pharmacy area” on the end. Yet, by sequestering those items away from the main store, it makes me a lot less likely to buy them. “Out of sight, out of mind” is so real.
Every woman in my extended family is like this save for one of my aunts. The rest of them can’t understand why I and most of the guys in the family do not want to go shopping with for anything. To them grocery shopping is supposed to take up to two hours, a milk run at least 30 minutes and even just running in quick for a drink or quick lunch is a 20 in minute affair. My sister-in-law acts like it’s an act of black magic I can go to the store, get several bags of groceries and return in under an hour including the drive.
I will never understand how people can think standing around in lines or idly browsing items you have no interest or intention of buying is a good use of their time.
My mom goes through every aisle because she refuses to make grocery lists. She insists on trying to remember everything for some reason. Eventually she’d send me, without a list, and be all surprised pikachu face when I forgot stuff.
Now as an adult, I live by my grocery list. I’ve got a pad of paper on my fridge with the heading, “DON’T FUCKING FORGET” which my boyfriend and I add to as things run low.
I keep a list on my phone, and laugh at my cousin’s roommate for being a mad genius who will straight up text a pic of the fridge and pantry when my cousin goes out to buy groceries. Like it seems unnecessary but also just clever if someone asks what’s missing from the fridge at the store. See for yourself! Also get me a bag of twizzlers.
I went to Walmart about 20 minutes ago just to pick up a pizza. There was 3 old dudes standing in front of the pizzas, not doing anything at all; just standing there being an obstruction. They ignored me when I said excuse me. They didn’t even move when I reached between them to grab a pizza off the shelf and bumped into them. What the fuck is the deal with old men? 😑
It should have just been an easy in and out trip but I have to deal with this shit.
I’ve become convinced that in supermarkets specifically, whether they’re huge like Walmart or smaller like the “express” style stores local to me, old people go through some sort of psychedelic experience when they enter, which will overwhelm them at random points and cause them to totally disassociate.
Cannot count the number of times an old person with a trolley has just fully blocked an aisle and stood there, gormless, while the world passes by. It’s like when you see a horse sleep standing up.
It’s either them or fucking parents clogging up the store, using their prams as battering rams, and letting their little shits rub their snotty little fingers on everything in sight and scream endlessly. Lol
Having been a new parent and having a stressful job at the same time, I am absolutely guilty of enjoying the peacefulness of grocery shopping and just… spacing the fuck out.
For that hour (that could have taken 10 minutes) nobody is up my ass about something. Ive already been given the task (grocery shopping) and until thats done nobody else is trying to heap shit onto my plate.
Thank god for grocery delivery services.
Hunter x gatherer
growing up mom would take me grocery shopping. we would leave at noon and not return until 6 or 7 in the evening.
to this day I fucking hate grocery stores.
I’ve seen enough bread, cereal, milk, eggs, and fuckin potatoes to last five lifetimes.
I can still, 25 years later, draw out the floorplan of every grocery store in a 20 mile radius of my hometown. I can even tell you where the fucking pickles are and tell you what shelf they were on.
half the stores went out of business. what the hell am I supposed to do with all this trauma? it’s not like it can help me, nor can they hurt me.
make it end!
My mom made me spend too much time in nordstrom as a child and now i hate clothing shopping. I just buy all my shit online because I would rather die than step foot in a shop.
People.ask me “Why do you wear nothing but Vans and Dickies?”
Because I know their cuts and sizing and I can order the right thing first time every time online.
I’ve got adhd, and I’m the one that can’t go into the store without browsing. My wife lowkey hates shopping with me because she just wants to get in and out. I start considering price, value, but also have to consider if it’s a garbage product or not, oh hey, do we need dried noodles? We certainly could, I love cacio e pepe, but maybe not now. Ah crap! I needed tomato paste! Back a few aisles we go!
Yeah I have no idea wtf this meme is talking about. A lot of people seem to have this weird idea that ADHD gives you some immense ability to focus? When it’s literally the opposite. They hear about hyper focus and think that means you have some weird superpower. In reality it’s an inordinate amount of attention given to whatever is the most interesting thing to you, at the expense of focus paid to things you actually need to do. It seems pretty unlikely that the person described in the OP is extremely interested in a shopping task.
Yeah I don’t think a ADHD sufferer is going to be hyper focused in as visually noisy a place as a supermarket
I’m exactly the same as what OP describes. I’m laser focused to get what I came for and get tf out as quick as possible as I hate shopping. Unfortunately my partner loves to look through the aisles to see what new products they have, it can be so frustrating but it makes her happy.
Yeah me too, which is one of the ways I know I don’t have ADHD. I’m straight in, grab the things I’m there for, visit no other aisles, don’t pick up any impulse buy items.
ADHD is about how they get distracted from things they should be doing to the point it makes life harder
That’s all well and good, but it is simply wrong to claim that is a manifestation of ADHD. That’s not how it works. ADHD is a dysfunction of the executive system of the brain. It causes challenges in things like sustained focus and/or impulse control (among other symptoms associated with executive dysfunction). For what you described, I would just call that a personality trait and not in any way related to ADHD. In fact, it’s actually the opposite behavior of what you would expect from ADHD: sustained focus on something you don’t want to do.
As someone who has actual diagnosed ADHD for many years, it’s a big pet peeve of mine when people ascribe any random aspect of their personality to “ADHD” (if they even actually have it at all). While the specific manifestation of the disorder can obviously vary from person to person, they still all share the same basic traits in how the brain is working, and to associate unrelated things to it does a disservice to those that have it and are trying to understand more about it, in addition to undermining the broader public understanding of the condition and how it affects every day life. Mental health disorders have become a trendy new badge for people to collect on social media and spread all kinds of bullshit misinformation about. It’s so fucking stupid and tiring. It makes it harder for people who actually have real mental health disorders to get what they need.
Oh man are you me?
Shopping is not a pleasant experience for us. The millions of products trying to attract my attention, the people I don’t want to talk to. It’s a hostile environment.
I always managed it by zooming through getting everything on my list in the right route.
My partner just doesn’t work that way. Hither and thither and lots of “just browsing” in between.
I’m convinced there are these two types of people in the world, and they marry each other
My wife and I (both with ADHD) do both, and alternate who is doing which. We’re on the same page about 75% of the time, and practicing our communication skills the rest of the time.
I sure did. Before I even enter the store I’ve already drawn up a map in my head with a very clear path of exactly where I need to go. When my wife joins me, that map goes straight in the garbage bin.
Lol, I don’t even have a map in my head. I walk the same route every time, because I get the same items every time. If I want variety or spice in my food life, I can go to a restaurant once a month. The rest of the time food can be as bare, repetitive, and thus simple as possible.
My partner actually thought she was quick in 'n out with shops until she witnessed, and then had to bear, me in action. Organise list by distance from the entrance and keep the flow of movement as fluid as possible, to snake your way through aisles ASAP and straight to self-checkout. In and out. And thank god for self-checkout, that cut at least 5 minutes of awkwardness from shopping.
Supermarket speedrun any%
My wife’s always looking in the telling me aisle numbers and I’m like tell me the item and I know where to go (until they rearrange the store but that only takes a trip or two to refigure).
I start considering price, value, but also have to consider if it’s a garbage product or not, oh hey, do we need dried noodles
Yeah, none of that is bad, but when my partner decides that it takes five minutes a product for each decision, I get annoyed. If you can’t figure it out in five seconds, the differences are obviously not a big enough deal.
I forget what I went to the store for so I browse every aisle until I see something that makes me remember it (usually the thing itself).
I can either go to the groceries after some specific items, when I’ll run erratically through every aisle until I find them all, or to “do groceries”, when I’ll run methodically through every isle browsing each product and deciding if I want it or not.
Or, and hear me out, make a list.
My wife shops like you, and it drives me fucking nuts.
I make a list organized by type of food. Bread and pasta are often close to each other in stores. Canned fruits are all in the same aisle. Produce is all together. What ever we need from each section is organized. I can buy food for both of us for a week in 45 minutes, and that includes waiting in the line.
My wife has the compulsion to look at everything, regardless of the list we made. She also has ADHD and time blindness, and will not acknowledge that we cannot go to 5 different stores and shop her way at each one, and go home and make dinner, and play a game together, and do chores. I love her to death but sometimes it can be exhausting.
Thanks, but I think I’ll pass that one.
My 2-months grocery runs take about 45 minutes, excluding the line, but I imagine it’s a larger run than yours. Outside of that, I never reach 10 minutes looking for things.
My wife used to make lists, but they were never useful.
I sometimes (okay, sometimes more than sometimes) forget something, try to remember it harder the next day, focus so much on not to forget it again that I forget something else. Or I remember every, but in the wrongest possible order so that I’m running through the store like a headless chicken and utterly stressed out.
I normally waited to grocery shop until needing a fair deal so I’m going down every aisle anyway (mostly) so look at stuff.
I don’t do the groceries anymore except make lists, so all my meandering is only at the Asian market because that’s a planned trip once a monthish.
I definitely go in with a purpose, and with a paper list that I hold clenched in my claws like it’s the last good thing I will ever hold.
If I don’t do that, I will go in to grab the one thing I need, but will become distracted seeing things I do need, but not as much as the one thing. After amassing an armful of kinda-needed-items, I will check myself out and go home, where I immediately remember I did not grab the one thing I needed.
It’s stressful as all get-out, and made so much worse by increasing costs. My face hurts when I am shopping because I can’t stop grimacing lol
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The other way around for me. I love browsing through every aisle of every store, no matter what kind. My wife on the other hand wants to grab the few things we came for and dip asap
Ha! I identity with this.
