1990sFest: Day Eight — Turns out Big Brother is neighborhood grocer

     Whenever people get tied into a knot over their information being harvested and used, I think of this column. The joke is that our personal details were ALWAYS traded around by our associates. It's the idea that we should be anonymous that's new.

     Oh, and Dominick's Finer Foods is long gone. So mining my information didn't help them, or at least didn't help them enough. 

     Conjure up the standard grocery fantasy: Mr. Cooper, behind the wooden counter in a small store with a pickle barrel and a little bell that jingles when you walk in. "Why hello there, Mrs. Smith," says Mr. Cooper, rubbing his hands together. "We have a nice shipment of cherries today. . ."
     That image unites the American people as much as the flag does. It strikes a chord even for those too young to remember anything like it, which is most people. The closest I ever got was a hardware store off Logan Boulevard where the owner wrapped my purchase in brown paper and twine and figured out the bill in pencil on the side of the package. I plan to cherish that memory for the rest of my life, particularly when going to the store becomes punching a number into a keypad and waiting for your purchase to slide down the chute.
     Keep Mr. Cooper in mind. We'll get back to him later.
     My local supermarket is Dominick's Finer Foods on North Broadway. I like my Dominick's, in the main. Their cashiers are nice. They've got one, Carlos, who helped my wife with groceries when she was big and pregnant. And once, when the bill was $33.06, and I was fishing in my pocket, filling time by saying, "I've got 6 cents," Carlos riposted, "You've got a sixth sense?"
     Not the best joke, but enough to build customer loyalty.
     Like any relationship, my cozy bond with Dominick's is always being tested. For instance, on the way in I would sometimes grab a cart and take it inside with me.
     Then the Dominick's put up a big sign. "PLEASE BRING A SHOPPING CART INSIDE WITH YOU." Immediately I took offense. What's the matter? Can't Dominick's pay a few minimum wage teens to collect shopping carts and not dump the responsibility onto its customers? What's next? "PLEASE GRAB A MOP BY THE DOOR AND TIDY UP SPILLS AS YOU SHOP"? My affection for Dominick's cooled, for a while.
     Eventually, of course, I was able to rationalize the sign. Dominick's is just appealing to customers' higher nature. This sign happens to be directed toward the operation of the store, but the next one could exhort people to trust in God.
     The latest test came when Dominick's instituted a card: Fresh Values. You give them your name and address and Social Security number and driver's license number and they issue you this card with which you can get discounts and cash checks. Jewel has had one like it for years.
     I saw the new card and felt a chill. I know how these things work. They feed your purchase information into the big Dominick's computer in Northlake, and before you know it there's a hurt little note from Bird's Eye slipped under your door every time you forget to buy frozen peas.
     We live in an information age, and people tend to guard their personal information the way they once guarded their good name. I had no idea what data about my grocery choices would be used for, and didn't want to find out. All I knew was that when the authorities came for the people who buy pickled herring, my name wouldn't be on the list, and I would slip quietly over the border into Denmark.
     My wife, however, ratted me out to Dominick's. Dazzled by the thought of savings, she signed us up, and slapped our new card into my hand the last time I went to the store to get eggs.
     The eggs cost $ 27.30, including the rib-eye steak and milk and smoked turkey and apples and everything else I picked up on the way to get the eggs.
     But I paid only $ 26.01. My Fresh Values card saved me $ 1.29. Who knows what that $1.29 could become, invested wisely in the current stock market. Probably 45 cents.
     Scurrying home, I pondered the trade-off. A clear-cut deal: Dominick's gives me $ 1.29, and in return gets information, which it swears will only be used for its own research purposes.
     "We are not selling lists at all, period," said Nancy Siler, manager of consumer affairs at Dominick's. "The information is extremely limited to a few individuals within the company, who have signed integrity statements."
     If you can't live with that, you can always pitch the card. It's interesting to have a tangible price put on your sense of free-floating paranoia. Vague unexamined anxiety about Big Brother is one matter. Saving a buck and a quarter is another.
     To put this in perspective, flash back to the cherished ideal, to Mr. Cooper at the little grocery. He knew everything you bought, didn't he? If you started picking up boxes of diapers or quarts of gin, he would certainly note it, and probably even blab about it to his other customers, something I can't picture Dominick's doing even in my worst Orwellian nightmare (although it's fun to imagine how they would. A computerized letter, probably. "Dear Lake View Resident: Did you know that NEIL STEINBERG is buying an awful lot of Ben & Jerry's ice cream for a man trying to lose weight. . . .")
     Odd how the misty nostalgic past and the scary anticipated future can end up being almost exactly same thing.

         —Originally published in the Sun-Times, Jan. 12, 1997