my support-the-little-guy soul.

Nearly two years ago, Mae Sot welcomed it’s first full-fledged supermarket. It’s a huge two-story Tesco, complete with everything you could dream of, I’m sure.

Until then, I had been making my rounds to a number of different local shops: I bought my vegetables & fruit in the Burmese market from individual stands, I bought my chicken from the CP shop.  I bought my flour and toilet paper from a bulk shop on the highway. I bought my Western food–cheese, chocolate chips, and peanut butter–from a little family store called Sweet Harmony. I bought my milk from a little house that had their own cow or something; I wasn’t really sure where they were getting it to be honest. I went to the mini-Tesco (about the size of a US gas station) to buy our milk, butter, and yogurt.

When the larger, super-Tesco entered the picture, I knew I could start shopping there and love it. I would be able to buy everything in one place, and probably new things that other stores didn’t even have. Sounds amazing, right?

I worried about the little guys, though. I worried about the little fruit and vegetable stands, where my $3 purchase went a long way. I worried about the locally-run stores that really depended on us not giving up on them. I even worried about the faces I saw week after week and the odd friendships we had made.  I wanted to keep supporting the little guys that make our little town go-round!

At first I thought I could go to the bigger Tesco just sometimes–to get a few extra special things, right? But I know myself. That wouldn’t have worked. I would be there just to get some extra-special oats or something, and think, Why don’t I just get my vegetables here? I’m already here, and it’d save me a trip to the market… And before too long, I’d eliminate the other stops all together for ease and convenience and one-stop-shopping.

So I made the choice to boycott the big Tesco. Not because my business would make a difference to Tesco–how would our little budget really affect a giant multi-national superstore?–or to the little guy–how would my $2 purchase save them?  Instead, I boycotted it because I thought it was a more holistic decision–if I want to be here to support the locally population, then I should do that in all that I do, from English classes to grocery shopping, to the best of my ability.

Basically, it was a small choice to try to prevent myself from myself. If I don’t even allow myself to go in to Tesco, I wouldn’t be tempted to just buy everything there.

Do you think I’m crazy yet?

That was two years ago. In the meantime, I will admit to making one $5 purchase at the big Tesco. In my defense, Stephen was in the middle of a recording project and needed a particular cord. I stopped at all three local shops I knew of, and all of them were either closed or didn’t have the particular cord he needed. I went and made the purchase, and he felt really horrible for a lack of pre-planning causing me to stumble on my boycott. I didn’t hold it against him too long 🙂

We do go to the supermarket complex sometimes, since they have a pizza place and ice cream shop in the shopping center. We stopped by yesterday to purchase some other cord from the Apple retailer there.

That is why I am telling you all of this. There is a point, I promise.

While we were walking through the complex to get to the Apple retailer, we passed the owners of Sweet Harmony. The owners of the little mom-and-pop business that I go out of my way to support. The little shop that is supposed to be benefiting from my big Tesco boycott.

They were going to Tesco.

{I tried to write that so you felt like a big huge balloon just deflated when I wrote that sentence. That was the deflation of my support-the-little-guy-SOUL. Did you feel that?}

For my own stubbornness and insanity, I still won’t shop at the big Tesco in Mae Sot. But I will declare this a boycott fail.