“Perspectives,” by Gerry Warner

Op-Ed Commentary

Talk about adding insult to injury. That’s what happened to me the other day in a Cranbrook supermarket.

First you must understand I’m over 70. Much over! And being a male septuagenarian, I’m subject to one of the major ailments afflicting the lucky men in this category. I have a prostate problem. Nothing to be ashamed of.  It’s just a fact of life which you learn to live with, especially when there’s the possibility of  cancer.

Fortunately, that’s not the case with me. Several years ago, I had a prostate biopsy in our great local hospital and I was clean. Phew! No cancer. That made me feel a hell of a lot better.

However, there’s a price to be paid for having a sensitive prostate. When you have to go, you have to go. NOW! In fact, in no more than a minute. In my case, any longer than that means only one thing – wetting my pants. It happened to me once and has almost happened again several times. It’s not easy to admit this. Especially to the major news source in town. But I see no reason to be ashamed.

Fast forward now. A few days ago, I entered one of Cranbrook’s major supermarkets. I don’t need to tell you which one because you can easily figure it out. It was going to be a long shop so I decided to go to the bathroom just in case. The bathroom in this case is way in the back of the store and difficult to find but I knew where it was for obvious reasons.

So, I beetled right back there. I didn’t want any more “accidents” of course. Well, you can imagine my ugly surprise when I was greeted by a locked door. Not a door locked by a key or twisting a knob, but a door locked by a metal electronic device like you might see in a bank or prison.

At this point, I confess I had a minor meltdown. Maybe it wasn’t so minor. So, I charged out of the cubby hole where the tiny bathroom was located and approached the first store staff member I could find. But his explanation made me even more stressed. He said the decision to electronically barricade the bathroom was because of alleged vandalism in the bathroom as well as drug dealing and damage to store property.

Now, I don’t doubt that what he said was true enough and would be a problem for the store. But this particular supermarket is owned by one of the best-known businessmen in B.C., a billionaire in fact.

Installing the new bathroom fortress was expensive the staffer told me. The store was “old,” he said. Security was needed because of the store’s neighborhood. And get this. The one-gender bathroom wasn’t just locked for men, women and children. You need to enter a “code” number to use it. I kid you not! So, I asked him what the code number was. He hesitated then reached into his pocket and pulled out four-digit number on a small piece of paper.

I asked incredulously, are you’re expecting people to memorize this number?  Why not erect a sign? The staffer agreed and then he called the store manager down who dutifully repeated the sad story about why they locked the bathroom. But before the manager came down, I dashed over to the shelves and grabbed an $8.99 bottle of jam, good enough for maybe three pieces of toast, and a tiny tin of tuna for $2.49, barely enough for one small sandwich. It’s bizarre. They’re making the containers smaller now while raising the prices. How greedy is that?

So I told the manager his company should be ashamed for installing such a bathroom. But even worse are the sky-high supermarket prices that are being charged coast-to-coast gouging millions of Canadians and not just we in Cranbrook. Despite this, the store staff treated me politely through the entire encounter and all I can say is good for them because I was one irate customer.

Canadians are sometimes accused of being too polite but they don’t normally take injustice lying down. So why are we taking these absurd grocery prices so meekly? We should be demonstrating in the streets. Or do we just lie down and take it?

– Gerry Warner is a retired journalist, who prefers to avoid confrontation.

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