Bring back spatial awareness
Published 11:52 pm Thursday, October 22, 2026
Generally speaking, I enjoy grocery shopping — the mountains of fresh produce, the seasonal displays, the cute helium balloons tied to checkout lanes.
But if I had to choose whether to go to a busy grocery store on a Sunday afternoon or have a surprise root canal, I’d have to think about it. They’re both bad, but at least you get numbing medication with the root canal, laughing gas if you’re lucky.
But no one laughs when they’re stuck in a shopping cart traffic jam in the cereal aisle. Why is it so maddening on busy weekends? Four words: Lack of spatial awareness.
Experts say spatial awareness is “an organized knowledge of objects including oneself, in a given space.” The problem with a busy store is that it’s often overrun by people who have almost zero spatial awareness.
If you’ve ever attempted to navigate down a crowded aisle only to be blocked by someone standing in the smack dab middle of it (with their cart parked diagonally), you’ve seen this phenomenon in action. The problem is not that the person is standing in the middle of the aisle. The problem is that the person seems to have no idea other people in the store might need to walk by.
Before I go further, I should point out an important distinction when it comes to the spatially unaware among us. There are two groups – the “temporarily clueless” and the “chronic offenders.”
I fully admit to having been temporarily clueless at times. Sometimes I get lost in my head as I stare into a sea of 15 different applesauce variations. We’ve all done it.
What I’ve found is that if you encounter a temporarily clueless person blocking the way, a subtle throat-clearing is all it takes to help them resurface into reality and realize you’re there. If that shopper has manners, they will often say “Sorry!” and step aside. Then you reply with a cheerful “No problem!” and continue down the aisle like well-mannered people whose mamas raised them right.
But sometimes the aisle blocker is so unyielding that you must go beyond the quiet cough and ramp up to the polite “Excuse me. May I get by?” How the shopper reacts tells you whether they are a chronic offender. Because chronic offenders won’t apologize for standing in everyone’s way. Instead, they’ll look at you with disdain, as if you’re a fly to shoo away — as if you have some nerve for attempting to get tomato sauce at the same time they’re blocking the tomato sauce.
Chronic offenders will purposefully take up space in a way that says, “I own this aisle. This is mine. I will stand here as long as I want. Ye shall not pass until I have looked at every package of Rice-a-Roni and checked the incoming text message on my phone.”
That kind of attitude is why I avoid shopping during peak traffic hours. The more people in the store, the more likely you’ll encounter chronic offenders who will make you want to hurl a ripe avocado at their heads.
In civilized society, we must remember that we’re all in this grocery store together. We make room for each other. We get things off the top shelf for people who can’t reach. We scoot our carts over so someone else can look at taco shells. We’re spatially aware of others in the bread aisle.
It’s like our great-grandmothers always said: If you can’t shop nicely, stay home and order pizza.
Gwen Rockwood is a syndicated freelance columnist. Email her at gwenrockwood5@gmail.com. Her books are available on Amazon.
