19. Choose Your Grocery Store

I'm Monoprix sun, Picard moon, Franprix rising. My Venus is in Lidl.

When I lived in Brooklyn, I was proud of the fact that I could clearly differentiate between Key Food, Associated, and C Town supermarkets. (Don't get me started on Western Beef.) Now that I've lived in Paris long enough, I can do the same but for Monoprix, Franprix, and Carrefour. (Don't get me started on Auchan.)

If you're in Paris and confused about which one to shop at, let me help you with this handy quiz.

1. You're in the middle of cooking a healthy dinner when you realize you are missing a key ingredient. You:

A. Say, "Fuck it." and just call the whole thing off. You go to the store anyway and buy a frozen pizza instead, along with a cashmere sweater, tampons, and a plunger.

B. Throw on a pair of pants and run downstairs to retrieve the item. You ignore your slightly increased heartrate when you see how expensive it is, but whatever. It's the principle.

C. Don't even bother throwing on pants -- you pull a Winnie the Pooh. Nude from the bottom down, you purchase the needed item, along with six loose hardboiled eggs.

2. You're running low on toilet paper. When do you stock up?

A. If there's less than six rolls left, that's considered code red. At the store, you go for the Family Size 24-pack, and you even have a granny cart big enough to fit it in.

B. You're on your last few squares when you finally go to the store. Even worse: you buy those single rolls because you figure you'll get it together later to buy a 12-pack of the better brand. Spoiler alert: you never get it together.

C. You stock up once you have also exhausted all your paper towels, fast food paper napkins, blotting paper, junk mail, and printer paper. And even then, you buy 1-ply.

3. How do you feel about farmers markets?

A. They're useful when you have guests coming over, and you want to make it look like you always have seasonal, fresh ingredients in your kitchen.

B. You buy your onions and get the hell out of there. The end.

C. They're a pain in the ass to have to walk through on your way to the public toilet.

4. What's your reusable grocery bag situation looking like?

A: You buy a new bag every time, mostly due to forgetfulness.

B: Your favorite bag has been through hell. It's held everything from a 5-kilo pumpkin to 500 loose rusty nails. You keep meaning to throw it away, but you'd rather stick those 3 packs of ground beef down your pants than spend 5-cents on a paper bag.

C. You're totally cool with sticking those 3 packs of ground beef down your pants.

5. Last question: what are your thoughts on Picard?

A: A lifesaver when you can't be bothered to do anything for dinner besides blast a plate of fish sticks in the microwave. Plus you like how tiny their ice cream cartons are, as if they know your game and are 100% willing to play into your delusions.

B. Overpriced and overhyped. If you're going to go the frozen food route, man up and bring out the Tostino's Pizza Rolls. Anything else is just sad.

C. You've been summering in the icy blasts of Picard's air conditioning for years now. A delightful home away from home.

If you answered mostly A's:

Congratulations, you're Monoprix’s bitch. Deep in your heart, you’d rather be at Target, but this is fine, too, you guess. You get your kicks by buying a maxi dress before it goes on sale. You know your store so well that you could totally Bird Box your way through it in the event of an environmental apocalypse.

If you answered mostly B's:

Welcome to purgatory, also known as Carrefour. There isn't really anything that stands out about this chain, other than the fact that they are always open when your preferred Monoprix is closed. Some of the bigger versions out in the suburbs can be impressive, but at the end of the day, it's still a Carrefour. So what?

If you answered mostly C's:

Do you watch movies like Uncut Gems for fun? Are all your passwords password123? Is your phone battery currently at 2%? If so, enough chaos runs through your blood for you to shop at Franprix. Whether you go into the store with a grocery list or just to see what the hell is going on, it doesn't matter: you do not fear death.