While Stop & Shop workers were busy ratifying a new contract this weekend, workers at Shaw's produce warehouse in Methuen were going out on strike, Channel 4 reports. That could mean you'll see only wilted lettuce at your local Shaw's and Star Market - assuming you cross the picket lines the workers could be putting up.

Like, Oh. My. God! It's been a month since our last snow storm! Howsoever shall we get ready? Have no fear, consumers, Stop & Shop is here to help, with a handy checklist it just blasted out to its scan-card customers, which urges you to stock up NOW on essentials such as hard candy, lollipops and at least seven gallons of bottled water PER PERSON. Oh, and pepper, because remember all those poor people in Baltimore bereft of pepper last week?

Wait, something's missing from their list. Where's the bread, eggs and milk? How can you have a storm without them? Also missing: Toilet paper. Who wrote this thing?

We took a break from our usual Shaw's/Roche Bros. shopping routine today and went down to the Super-Mega-Humongo Stop & Shop in Dedham to take advantage of the 5% one-time discount you get when you sign your life away to Stop & Shop so they can data-mine your purchases to hell and back and bombard you with endless promotions (i.e., you register your new 'n' improved see-through Stop & Shop card).

They have so much room at this Colossus of a store that the deli department was able to devote an entire display case to a Thanksgiving diorama featuring two Pilgrim dolls giving thanks for nature's bounty, in the form of cold cuts, cheeses, olives and pumpkins. Don't worry, a few aisles away, they had a complete selection of Halloween candy.

Not the best cell-phone photo I've ever taken, but you get the idea:

My wife returned from the Dedham Stop & Shop today with the giggles. Some worker there commandeered the speaker system to go all Irish on the customers. There were a couple of halting, then sincere, verses of Galway Bay. Then dead air was followed by the rest of the parody. Shoppers picked up their strawberries serenaded by:

The Boston Business Journal reports the chain will be giving away 36 different types of generic prescription drugs (so, yeah, you'll need a valid prescription) between Jan. 2 and March 21 as a publicity stunt to help financially beleaguered customers.

Shane Curcuru reports that Arlington is in the grips of an ice-cream shortage:

... The local Stop & Shop on Mass Av in Arlington has one of its two frozen food aisles unplugged and emptied. No ice cream nor frozen novelties were in evidence throughout the store. ... Stop and Shop also has planned for this contingency, and lists four other stores within a 5 mile radius of zip 02476; note however that time of day and traffic conditions may require you to plan for extra time and bring your own cooler and icepacks to ensure the proper temperature conditions of your purchases. ...

If you think that standing outside the Arlington Stop & Shop with clipboards and video cameras and accosting shoppers by asking them which of the tubs of vanilla and chocolate pudding you're also holding would do better in foreign policy if elected president, you really need to switch majors. Gabrielle Gurley recounts the bizarre incident this past Saturday:

... Like our candidates, many Americans still speak in code. Yet for most of these encounters, no translation is necessary. Especially if you are a black woman being asked by a white man about the foreign policy qualifications possessed by a container of chocolate pudding.