Countdown
Countdown is my go-to for small and quick grocery shops, as it's a bit easier to simply pop in and out. The nearby Pak n Save generally has better prices and a wider selection, but is a much bigger supermarket and you need to have about half an hour on your hands, as opposed to doing a quick Countdown run and taking 10 minutes or so.
It stocks all the staples you'd expect although the meat section deserves a special mention for being both limited and frustrating. There is very little choice in meat and they seem to package it up in counterintuitive portions, e.g you can buy 1 chicken breast or 3 but not a pack of 2. Sometimes the meat isn't exactly fresh and I've had a couple of bad experiences buying packs of meat, only to open them at home and find that the meat either needs to be used that same day, or isn't able to be used. I bought a little fillet of fish for my cat once but upon opening, it had to be thrown out instead as it was fully rotten and not fit for cat or human.
The self checkouts here are nowhere near as bad as the New World Metro, the only thing I'd advise against is coming here at 3.30pm during the school term as that's when it really packs out. Since NZ banned plastic bags, they've offered a choice at the checkout of buying either a cloth bag ($3?) or a brown paper bag (20c?). I find it best to bring bags from home because there is no way in hell I'm buying additional bags and contributing to the obscene profit margin of the supermarket duopoly, which turns billions of dollars of profit each year while the average Kiwi has to choose between cheese and turning on the heating.
If you do have to buy a bag, steer clear on the brown paper ones as they are pretty weak and will break before you get to the car, resulting in a spill of milk/juice/wine.
Which brings me to the Unfortunate Incident of the Karen in the Daytime. I'd had my car license for exactly a week at this point, don't judge. Because the carpark is very busy with tiny parking spaces and a lot of people trying to get in and out, I was trying to be very careful manoeuvring a car I wasn't used to driving, into a parking space. Too late I realised I'd scraped the side of another parked car. As a new driver, I found this worrisome and backed out to attempt to rectify my parking and assess what to do next.
She came barrelling out of nowhere, fried bottle blonde scarecrow hair and arms akimbo. She hammered, screaming, with her dry and flaky fists on my driver's window that I had to STOP, RIGHT NOW and would not back off until I opened the window to ask if the car happened to be hers and if so, what we needed to do. I'm not sure if just about breaking someone's car window counts as common assault, was pretty taken aback by what was happening and a lot of people were starting to stare.
Worzel Gummidge proceeded to scream some more, and demanded my phone number and contact details. Again I asked whether the car was hers, to which she answered "NO BUT YOU STILL HAVE TO GIVE ME YOUR NUMBER RIGHT NOW". I ended up going over to the car, attaching my phone number to it and leaving the scene. Remember I'd been driving only a week and was on the verge of having a public panic attack over all that had transpired. Later on that evening, I received a text message from the owner of the car saying that they couldn't even see a scrape and not to worry. It definitely seemed like an extreme overreaction, nothing came of it in the end and I still wish I'd got Uber Karen on camera.
I'm still really, really careful in the carpark since that happened.
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