Photographs of found pieces of paper with writing on them, photographs or discarded cutouts. Appreciate the forgotten artifacts of everyday life. Share any paper that you found (on the ground, stuck in some bushes or between cans of soup at the store for example) and you do not know who wrote it. Love letters, doodles, interesting to-do or grocery lists, notes from the past - share your discovery with us!
Grocery Lists
Hi everyone! I was asked in the comments of another post here to share some of the papers and lists I find while at work, so here’s the first one! I manage a produce department for a big grocery store in upstate New York, and I find these forgotten in my department all the time. There will definitely be more to follow as I find them!
Sort by:
Best
Open comment sort options
Best
Top
New
Controversial
Old
Q&A
don't look up literacy levels in the US - i just made that mistake myself.
So I live in an extremely poor, uneducated part of the state. People drop out of school to do farm work or some type of manual labor. Within the past year I’ve had three employees who couldn’t read. It’s really sad. Sometimes it’s just like low reading comprehension or only having basic reading and writing skills, like a 50 year old woman who would spell “cored” as “cord” and couldn’t understand her closing list. Sometimes it’s kids who just never learned to read in school. I had one guy, 19 year old high school student and such a sweetheart, who just flat out couldn’t read. Such a nice kid, and we thought he just was choosing not to do his task list. I figured out that he couldn’t read when i asked him to grab the watermelon box that was right in front of his face, and he looked around blankly. When I told him to grab the box with the bumblebee on it, he got it right away. I did a couple other things like that and realized he was trying, he just couldn’t perform a crucial part of the job
I was reading at a college level in 5th grade but on my grocery list I couldn’t care less. I’ve spelled sausage as “sausig” and pepperoni as “pepperoin”. I write things down quickly like a free write exercise. Afterwards I make a second, neater, list with everything in order according to the store layout.
I thought a child had written this until I got to the Fireball. 4oz. Very specific.
I assumed that was the single-shot bottle of Fireball whisky, but they're only 50 ml which is about 1.75 oz.
Web search says there's a product called "Pulp Riot Semi-Permanent Hair Color- Fireball 4oz" which is sold at Walmart and Amazon, so it looks like she's buying red hair color.
Or based on the barbecue ingredients they meant to write 40 Oz but accidentally wrote 4oz because literacy seems to be a skill they specced pretty low on this playthrough.
Surely this is a recipe rather than a grocery list and you put 4 oz into the sauce.
I’ve heard of many different types of alcohol being added to recipes, but never Fireball! 🤮 Ruining some delicious Little smokies in BBQ!
I live in a very poor, very illiterate rural part of the state. Seeing things like this isn’t uncommon at all here
Mmm, some little winers and vinigar sause sounds really good right about now!
Someone hoping a like-minded person was doing the shopping
I’m going to name this one little winer
bbq sause 🤤
I thought maybe it was a bored kid in the hospital helping mom or dad write a grocery list. Would be sad if it was an adult with limited literacy. I saw you’re in upstate NY though- I visited Woodstock several years back and I couldn’t believe how economically depressed it was in the nearby towns- like a developing country.
I remember seeing an advertisement for volunteers for adult literacy and I was shocked anyone would need that in the US. But it said adults who struggle either due to rural poverty or dyslexia often don’t get help bc of the shame, when all they usually need is a little confidence and tutoring (and, of course, time).