Sep 18, 2020 4 min read

Back when people were going to live concerts, I’d shake my head at news reports of fans camping in lines outside the venue, hoping to get tickets. My work as a TV reporter sometimes had me covering those stories, as well as the ones back in 1983, when surly parents lined up at stores to buy Cabbage Patch dolls.

It would be so unlike me to wait in line for a doll, or tickets, or anything else. Occasionally, my family and I would sit on benches in the lobby of a restaurant, waiting for our names to be called. But my cutoff was 15 minutes. I’ve had some really delicious restaurant meals, but none that would have me standing in line for an hour, waiting to be seated.

But now, there’s COVID-19. And now there’s a Trader Joe’s in town.

The stores are cropping up all over, they’re relatively new to Western Pennsylvania, but over the years I’ve lived in other places where a Trader Joe’s was nearby. It’s a place to shop if you’re vegan, or if you like frozen Indian entrees, or if $2 for a bag of lettuce seems about right, or if you want a bouquet of fresh flowers for about $3.

Me, I go for the dried mandarin oranges.

Sure, I pick up other things: salsa and corn chips and onions and beets. But I mostly go for the oranges: the segments are dried into chewy, flat bits and then sugared – I know, bad – and packed in plastic envelopes. They snap when I bite them – like tangy bubble wrap for my mouth.

But those treats are harder to come by these days, because they await me only at the end of a long line. Because of COVID-19 restrictions, Trader Joe’s will allow only so many customers into the store at at time.

About once a week, I will drive there. There’s always a line outside, masked people looking down at their phones as they creep forward between the social distancing Xs on the sidewalk. If the line extends past the corner of the building as it often does, I keep on driving.

The wait will be too long.

Early mornings – chronologically, I qualify for the elderly hours – and right before closing are best. Yesterday, the line had only six people, and I got to the door in less than five minutes. There I was met by two illogically but genuinely happy workers, one of whom was spraying a shopping cart with disinfectant and the other smilingly welcoming me through the door. She had a mask on, but her eyes were smiling.

And that’s the other thing I like about Trader Joe’s: all the workers are so nice. When they ask how you are, you get the feeling they really want to know. Yesterday, the man who bagged my groceries noticed a discolored bit of lettuce in my bagged greens. He ran back to grab me a different one. The woman who was scanning my order asked what I was making for dinner. The real answer was leftover chili, but I told her I couldn’t get past thinking about tearing into that bag of dried oranges.

I suppose other stores have lines outside during this pandemic, but I can’t think of one line I’d be willing to join.

Except for that line outside of Joe’s. As I waited yesterday, I was thinking about those oranges. I would allow myself just three at a time, but each one would have the perfect yummy snap. Totally worth masking up and lining up for.