Great Field Trips: The grocery store

I am the coordinator of our local homeschooling group, so I’m always scheduling new field trips for our families. We do all kinds of things, from museum classes to special traveling exhibits, but my absolute favorite field trips are the ones that allow us to really explore our community.

Don’t get me wrong; we get to do that every day anyway. But when a store manager agrees to take you all around the store, meet someone from every department and even ask the pharmacist about his career, it’s pretty awesome. That’s exactly what our local Shop N Save did for us last week.

I couldn’t have asked for a better field trip. A worker with over a decade of experience and an obvious love of her customers took us through the store, answering our questions and explaining how everything works. We learned that the store uses compost, donates to the food pantry daily and strives for a “zero waste” policy—all things that made me like shopping there even more. Workers explained to us about what kind of education they had to have, as well as other skills necessary for their jobs, and the manager told us some details about the store itself.

I was so impressed with this field trip, especially with the thoroughness the staff went through to show us around. They even gave the kids cookies and special discount cards for fruit during future visits. We go there for some purchases anyway, but after this visit they really made a Shop N Save customer out of me! I really recommend scheduling a field trip with your local store. You’ll be surprised at what you learn, and it’s a wonderful way to get to know your community even better.

Photo courtesy of Wikipedia