The key to unlock doors

Today, my wife and I went to grocery shopping. We're looking for a pack of Origins Organic hulled millet that my son is eating as a porridge daily. It's running out and we desperately needed a packet to refill it up. It probably didn't help that it was about to rain heavily and I only have about 30 mins turnaround time to get back home because a student is coming for lessons. In other words, I'm looking for a grab and go situation, not really in the mindset for shopping around.

Not my wife.

I went to the usual shelf where the millet is, but it was empty. I searched around neighboring shelves to see whether there are any hidden packs, but I couldn't find any. I thought that it's time to go back empty handed now, and I'm all ready to give up and go home.

Not my wife.

She saw a employee packing some stuff at a nearby shelf, with several large carton of unpacked boxes on a trolley near her. My wife went ahead to ask her if there's any more stock left for the hulled millet. She said it's still in the process of packing. Right now, most people would have left there and then and accepted the fact that nobody is going to buy any hulled millet today.

Not my wife.

She asked if she can help her unpack the cartons containing the hulled millets. And we started partly opening each carton on the trolley to see if they contain the stuff we wanted. If not, we pack it up and move it to another spot, and repeat the process. To an oblivious observer, it seems like we're actually packing the store. Eventually after moving like 5 to 6 big cartons, we managed to find the exact carton with the hulled millet. I think in the process of helping ourselves, we also helped the auntie just a little to unpack the super heavy cartons off the trolley.

This is one of the lessons I'm trying to learn after coming out of school, that there's no definite yes and no and everything is negotiable. Life is not an MCQ (multiple choice question) where there is only one answer in the marking scheme. Human relations is the key to unlock a lot of locked doors out in the real world. Apparently, I needed a revision course on this particular lesson.

Not my wife.