Anyone who food shops on Sunday—especially when there is an afternoon football playoff—is crazy. That’s what I told myself last Sunday morning after walking into my local supermarket.

Getting a carriage meant taking more than a few sidesteps, saying, “excuse me” four times and taking three minor detours. And, that was only 10 feet from the door. At that point I should have left and gone home. But a 16-year-old needs milk and I wanted to make a roast beef for dinner. So I persevered. And frankly, that’s an understatement.

Inside traffic lights wouldn’t have helped the chaos I found there. Moving toward the eggs and butter took five minutes since that section was more clogged than a cholesterol-filled artery from those same eggs and butter sitting on a shelf nearby. While I waited I was hit in the backside with another shopper’s carriage. He apologized and I told him not to worry, it seemed inevitable with the crowd. Weaving my way to the milk, only a few steps away from the eggs, I accidentally knocked into a woman’s purse. She wasn’t happy. Even an apology didn’t appease her anger as she continued to growl and frown at me. In fact I don’t think I saw one smiling face inside the entire place.

The deli was packed tighter than a pound of the sliced cheese I needed. I decided the family would have to live without that cheese and cold cuts for a few days Yes, I needed milk and other necessities, but food-shopping masochism only goes so far.

Avoiding stock boys who pushed carriages stuffed with six feet of flattened cardboard and other detritus was almost like driving through a war zone. Customers trying to find one or two items stood in the aisles looking dazed and overwhelmed. I wheeled around them and wished them the best in their quest for…whatever it was they were looking for.

After the second aisle I thought about leaving the carriage and going home. But I needed the milk and wanted a few other items to go with our meal. Instead of giving up I continued my pursuit secretly wondering why these steel weapons didn’t have brakes after I was hit a second time by yet another shopper.

It got worse. We all jockeyed for positions at the meat counter, negotiated through fruits and veggies and tried to outsmart each other at the frozen food cases. Every square inch of the store was filled with people grabbing for once thing or another.

Other than the deli, I finished shopping and headed for the checkout. Oy vey, it got worse. “Patience is a virtue,” someone recently told me. Almost every aisle held aggravation, I’m not sure which aisle offered patience. All I know is I didn’t buy or get a free sample that day.

I gambled on what I hoped was the shortest line. “Please please pah-leese don’t let anyone need a price check,” I thought rechecking my own purchases for tags.

I picked up one of those tawdry tabloids and entertained myself with celebrity cellulite photographs and tales of who is cheating on whom. My motto when waiting in an endless line is, “We all gotta do what we gotta do”—even if that means burning some celebrity’s cellulitic butt into my brain.

Yes, I made it through and even packed my own bags just to get out of there as fast as possible.

Bottom line: Anyone who does food shopping on a Sunday is crazy—including me.