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Aspetta, Prego, Avanti

By oncptime

You can learn a lot about a culture of a place from its grocery stores; hints and clues litter the places. The fresh produce, the types of sales, the music blaring from the tinny overhead speakers—each of them tells you a little something more about the personality of that specific place on the planet.

Florence is host to a number of minimarkets, corner stores, and bodegas of varying size, but it also has its fair share of American-styled grocery...boutiques. They’re not quite Whole Foods but they’re certainly not Safeways; they’re somewhere in between. The Conad on Via Nazionale, is my favorite. Fresh baked bread, Spanish imported mussels, and Alaskan salmon all just a few steps away from my apartment.  Uncle Ben’s brand curry jockeys for shelf space with Patak’s and three brands of pita bread conveniently lie in wait just one shelf down. The store is an exercise in internationality, and strolling down its aisles reminds me of similar stores in D.C.

The Conad outshines a number of other grocery stores in the area for a number of reasons: selection, longer hours, a markedly friendlier staff—but honestly, I’m not here to talk to you about a grocery store. Not really. No, this is a story about how I learned how not to wait in line in Italy.

Long lines are a given in Italian grocery stores. People shop like schools of fish, flowing and gliding through the store, picking up their desired items, and beelining for the registers en masse. Consequently, the lines are long. It’s not uncommon to see a winding, meandering queue snaking its way back and forth aisles as people wait impatiently.  For their length, you move through the lines pretty quickly—the cashiers work swiftly, gossiping in rapid-fire Italian, pausing only to ask “Una borsa?”

The lines here don’t break off into individual tributaries to different registers. Rather a large, muscular man calls people down a row of sorts and directs them to the next available cashier. He doesn’t speak to the customers so much as he chants to them, guiding them along with a rhythmic repetition. “Aspetta,” Wait. “Prego.” You’re welcome. “Avanti!” Next. He is equal parts traffic cop and bouncer; I’ve seen him toss out belligerent drunks attempting to clear the store of its boxed wine stock more than once.

So I’m standing there, listening to Abraham Lincoln: Vampire hunter in one ear, and catching snippets of Italian dish in the other. I’m clutching a ciabatta loaf and two zucchini and wondering why I didn’t grab a basket of my own when suddenly this little old woman steps right in front of me, her arms full of bread and eggs. I was stunned. She’d been sneaky about it, waiting until I was preoccupied sneezing to insert herself in the non-spot before me.

“Scusa,” I ventured, sure she was just confused.  “C’e una linea qui.”

She ignored me. Or perhaps she didn’t speak Italian.

“Excuse me,” I repeated in my most authoritative American English. “But there’s a line here, you can’t cut.”

She gave me a withering look, mumbled to herself in Italian and turned back to the front of the line, effectively ignoring me again. What was I to do?  Speaking to the woman had no effect, and I couldn’t very well push her out of the way. Could I? No one behind me seemed perturbed by the transgression but I…I was livid. Who was this crone to cut me in line? How dare she disregard the most basic of human courtesies? In retrospect, I think she knew it was coming.

I reached out to tap the women on the shoulder, intent on outing her as the line-hopper that she was and instructing her to leave. My fingers barely touched her when she howled, whirling on me and letting out a litany of curses in Italian I could barely understand.

“Don’t touch me. Don’t EVER touch me.” She howled, pointing an accusatory finger at me.

“Don’t touch her.” The man behind me muttered, a tone of judgment in his voice. Where was he when she cut us all in line?

The cashier-bouncer-traffic-guard is there, questioning what’s going on and suddenly I realize that I’m in trouble. My ciabatta and zucchini are gone and I’m being pulled to the front of the line, towards the exit doors. They slide open. I’m ordered out. They slide close.

I didn’t get my bread or my veggies but I learned something about the Italian grocery store etiquette that day. Cutting in line? Fine, fine, no problem. Physically touching someone? An absolute no-no.