Invasive

When did flowering plants invade our grocery stores, like invasive weeds?

I do not recall grocery stores selling flowers when I was young. The grocery store where I worked as a teenager did not sell flowers, it sold food. Food. You know, things you can eat.

It is now May, allergy season, in just about every state in the union. So why, pray tell, do some grocery stores, not only sell flowers of every sort of pollinating variety, but put those flowers right next to the cash registers, the only way out of the store? I am mystified.

When I complained about this at one of my favorite stores (Trader Joe's in Palo Alto), the clerk at the cash register, who was also apparantly some sort of manager of the store, did not apologize to me, but instead told me that the flower display would be gone "by next week". He told me that many people have allergies, including himself, inferring that I should just suck it up, or go get allergy shots, like he does.

Thanks. Thanks a bunch. I don't think I will be coming back to this store anytime soon.