I was at a relationship event on Valentine’s Day 2010 and a very attractive woman in the room raised her hand and claimed she couldn’t meet a guy anywhere when another woman made the odd suggestion she go to “Trader Joes.”

Then about 6 days later, I was on a date and the woman I was with said she never thought she’d be internet dating because she thought she’d meet someone randomly, like at “the supermarket.”

And I realized there’s a ‘cute-meet-at-the-supermarket myth’ that’s been floating around for a while now along with mythic tips too — “Single guys are always in the frozen food section, single guys are always buying ‘for one’.”

It might work in a romantic comedy or on “How I Met Your Mother”, but the supermarket is a hard place for a pick up — (a) it’s very hard not to come off creepy following a cute woman down the aisles and (b) the whole environment isn’t conducive to real conversation.

A bunch of dating books encourage women to be flirty or ask questions of a guy they are interested in at the market (“So, have you tried that High Fiber Chex?”) but you’re asking women to approach complete strangers and hit on them in a place where interaction is not that socially acceptable, unlike a bar (where women still don’t approach).

Let me tell you, guys who have had 20 years of hitting on women experience (like myself) wouldn’t go in cold in a “non-socializing environment”, let alone women who, as a whole, rarely make a move, let alone a very bold move like that. You can’t get a woman to make eye contact with you at party where you know all the same people!

In my twenty plus years of supermarket shopping, I have never been flirted with while at the grocery. My best friend Julie (with twenty-five years of shopping experience) says she’s been hit on only a handful of times and never gave her number or took theirs — and one was a guy who said something to the effect of “Damn, look at you lookin’ all fierce with your basket and shit!”)

The one time I gave my card to a taller, quirky girl with a Lynda Carter T-shirt one person behind me in line at Vons, she never called. And that was an awkward transaction, especially with the other person in between us and the cashier watching this painful, attempted pick-up go down only inches away from them.

How many (real-life) couples have you met that ‘met-cute’ in a supermarket? I can’t think of a single one.

This entry was posted on Sunday, March 7th, 2010 at 4:10 pm and is filed under Dating, Myths, Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.