Where Mr. Monk Shops

Went grocery shopping tonight and discovered where Adrian Monk buys his groceries.

It’s a California chain called Albertson’s.

Albertsons1

How do I know?

Albertsons2

Gotta disinfect that shopping cart push bar!

Author: Jimmy Akin

Jimmy was born in Texas, grew up nominally Protestant, but at age 20 experienced a profound conversion to Christ. Planning on becoming a Protestant seminary professor, he started an intensive study of the Bible. But the more he immersed himself in Scripture the more he found to support the Catholic faith, and in 1992 he entered the Catholic Church. His conversion story, "A Triumph and a Tragedy," is published in Surprised by Truth. Besides being an author, Jimmy is the Senior Apologist at Catholic Answers, a contributing editor to Catholic Answers Magazine, and a weekly guest on "Catholic Answers Live."

29 thoughts on “Where Mr. Monk Shops”

  1. Now, you and I both know that Monk could never shop in a store where melons were so shoddily assembled…and there would have to be a piece of wipe just hanging out of the top of one of the wipe-carton’s so that he didn’t have to touch the carton before disinfecting his hands…but then if there was a piece hanging out of the wipe carton…someone else could have touched it and infected it….oooh…..major meltdown in the market!!!
    God Bless.

  2. I’ve never seen Monk, so I don’t know if he does this, but have you ever noticed paper towels on the floor near the door in public restrooms? I see it every day at the office. They’re from people who don’t want to touch the door handle. They open the door with the towel, then drop it as they walk through.
    I guess it’s a fairly common practice. Thought it kinda odd. Anybody do that?

  3. I’ve never seen Monk, so I don’t know if he does this, but have you ever noticed paper towels on the floor near the door in public restrooms? I see it every day at the office. They’re from people who don’t want to touch the door handle. They open the door with the towel, then drop it as they walk through.
    I guess it’s a fairly common practice. Thought it kinda odd. Anybody do that?

  4. I do but I don’t drop the towel on the floor. I’ve seen too many people walk out without washing their hands. ugh. If they only made the doors to swing out! I don’t think of myself as neurotic but I do wipe the cart handle down if the wipes are available after seeing a program once where they tested cart handles and it was GROSS. The checkers at my grocery wear gloves.

  5. have you ever noticed paper towels on the floor near the door in public restrooms? I see it every day at the office. They’re from people who don’t want to touch the door handle. They open the door with the towel, then drop it as they walk through.
    I guess it’s a fairly common practice. Thought it kinda odd. Anybody do that?

    Yes, and this is because studies reveal that something like a third of all people don’t wash their hands after using the bathroom.
    I honestly don’t know why many businesses, etc., don’t put open-top trash cans near the bathroom doors so that people can do this without having to drop the paper towel on the ground. (It’s no good if they have one of those swing-top trash cans since you have to touch or run the risk of touching the swing part, which itself gets gross.)
    Better yet, I don’t know why architects don’t design bathroom doors so that they open by being pushed out so people woulnd’t have to use a door handle. The door handle ought to be used when going in to the bathrooom rather than coming out after you’ve (hopefully) washed your hand.

  6. Bathroom doors swing in to facilitate the “mad, last-second dash.” What they should do is swing both ways, like a saloon door.
    I am one of the people who uses a paper towel to open the door, but I have never simply dropped it on the floor. If there is no trash can at hand, I just hold on to the paper towel until I find one.

  7. I’m also one of the OCD (obsessive compulsive disorder) folks who use a paper towel to open the bathroom door. I hate it when there’s no papertowels in the bathroom (think hand dryers). I can think of several times when I stood near the door waiting for someone to open it from the outside and I’d walk through it normally after they came in. I know, I know, it’s a sickness!

  8. Yes! Those electric hand dryers are the worst!
    Except for those awful faucets which you have to hold down or keep pressing in order to wash your hands.

  9. I’m also one of the OCD (obsessive compulsive disorder) folks who use a paper towel to open the bathroom door. I hate it when there’s no papertowels in the bathroom (think hand dryers). I can think of several times when I stood near the door waiting for someone to open it from the outside and I’d walk through it normally after they came in. I know, I know, it’s a sickness!
    Believe it, or not, that is the best policy. That’s what all the health and safety experts do during their inspections. Besides, why should I put my just cleaned hands on a germ filled door?
    So rest assured Stacy, you’re in good company. 🙂

  10. Ooops… I never said that Idahoans were famed for our HTML…
    ****
    Ah-Hem!
    Albertson’s is an Idaho chain. We here in Idaho have so little… Albertson’s and Napoleon Dynamite are all we got… please don’t take away half of our claims to fame… 8^P

  11. Keeping alcohol wipes with you is a good idea.,
    while washing your hands often is the best defense against getting sick, the second best defense is using alcohol wipes.
    Here is a helpful hint next time you are in
    a hotel.
    Use alcohol wipes on the tv control, the telephone receiver and the door knobs in the room. Those are three of the dirtiest spots, and always take the bedspread off the bed. Don’t even sit ona hotel bedspread.
    Even in 5 star hotels it was found the bacteria levels and germ levels are very high.
    The faucet controls in the any bathroom are also good for alcohol wipedown since the maids rarely wipe those.

  12. Albertson’s is called Jewel here in Illinois. I can still use my Albertson’s discount card there. I think Osco is the equivalent of the Sav-on drug store that’s usually associated with Albertson’s. Albertson’s was the first grocery store I’d seen with the self-checkout. There’s another chain here called Dominick’s, which is equivalent to Von’s in Southern California. Talk about deja vu. Now if I could just find a Trader Joe’s…

  13. I don’t like it when you guys leave your paper towels stuck in the door handle. Who has to remove it? Some smuck like me. Who by the way hasn’t had a cold in two years and I don’t use the paper towel trick. I wash my hands, throw away the towel and get on with my life. (maybe you could build up a little germ resistance if you would just touch the handle)
    Bob

  14. I generally feel the government is too intrusive (except for abortion, but that’s another subject), but there ought to be a law that requires any bathroom that uses hand dryers have twice the number of hand dryers as sinks. I have been in bathrooms that had 5 sinks and 1 hand dryer (and of course, no paper towels). 2 sinks to 1 dryer seems to be the norm. I hate standing there with wet hands while I have to wait for my 4 boys to dry their hands. Doesn’t anybody realize it takes more time to dry than to get wet?
    That’s my only Monk type pet peeve, but I love the show.
    Statman

  15. LawfulGood is trying to hog Albertson’s all for himself and his fellow Idahoians!
    He must not know the jingle!
    Albertson’s / It’s YOUR store!
    Notice that the jingle does not say “Albertson’s / It’s the possession of people who live in Idaho.”
    No! It’s your store.
    Unfortunately, it’s not my store any longer now that I live on the hated “East Coast” and there are no Albertson’s to be found. There are, fortunately, some Safeways, which–as Benedict pointed out–are better than Albertson’s.
    At any rate, it gave me a pleasant walk down memory lane to see pictures of good ol’ Albertson’s, with their generally not-quite-up-to-standards stores still running strong thanks to their cost-cutting lack of selection and general uncleanliness.
    As to offering diaper wipes next to the shopping carts, that’s the Next Big Thing to rock the grocery store world since “paper or plastic.” I’m seeing those diaper wipes crop up everywhere in the vicinity of a shopping cart. Martin’s. Food Lion. Giant. Diaper wipes are everywhere!
    It’s like, all of the sudden, grocery stores began to believe that germs kill people, or something.

  16. Ry: You may not have been in an Albertsons for a while. They’ve apparently upgraded since your time with them.
    Not only are they quite clean, they–or at least the one in my neighborhood–has a very large selection of stuff.
    In fact, the reason I go there (it’s a little farther to drive than the Vons) is that they have stuff there that I can’t get at Vons (which is now renovating to compete with Albertsons), such as low-carb hot pockets and non-carbonated fruit-flavored drinks that use Splenda. Can’t get any of that at Vons.
    In my neighborhood, it’s Albertsons that is more upscale and Vons that is trying to catch up.


  17. LawfulGood is trying to hog Albertson’s all for himself and his fellow Idahoians!
    He must not know the jingle!
    Albertson’s / It’s YOUR store!
    Notice that the jingle does not say “Albertson’s / It’s the possession of people who live in Idaho.”
    No! It’s your store.

    That’s just what we want you to think… Muhahahahha!!!!!!

  18. Piggly Wiggly has been doing this for quite a while. “I’m big on the Pig!” as we say in South Carolina.

  19. Our local Kroger’s also has wipes in the meat department. Nice after you put one of those packages of meat into the plastic bag.

  20. Here in New England, all of the stores have these wipes. I personally think this is a great idea for two reasons. One, I have a medically-fragile child, and two, at the risk of sounding racist (which I am not) we have a lot of immigrants in this neck of the woods, and in general, they are not as immunized as we.
    Regarding paper towels, we grab the handle, hold it open with one foot, while throwing the towel in the trash. If that isn’t an option, use your left pinkie to open the door.

  21. I tend to wear loose shirts and sometimes if I have enough privacy to not be self-conscious and the bathroom is low-enough traffic to avoid being smacked in the face by the door while I attempt this, I will use part of my shirt to cover the handle before touching it to open the door.

  22. In Minnesota, a number of the big chains have those towels when you enter, or where you get your cart, during flu season.
    Of course, we still have the artifically heated lake and huge flock of Canadian geese, and dropping encrusted sidewalk so we’all -all still die aieee- when the avian pandemic hits. 😉
    Albertson is a college in Idaho. My sister teaches there.

  23. I am the person who contacted Marcus and you (I think) on 10-20 on his Thursday show.
    Please give me information on how to contact Rosalind Moss. She, as a Jewish child and then in other churches, and is one whose definition of faith will help me present my program to a mixed Christian group.
    Thanks…Cradle Catholic and loving God more all the time!!

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