He’s The Worst Grocery Shopper In The World [Supermarket Sweep]
There are many things that I’m bad at in this world. I took Spanish classes for approximately 45.2 duodecillion years in school, and I can barely speak a lick of it today. Depending on the phases of the moon, my Mario Kart skills range from “born yesterday” to “drunk driver who was born yesterday.” And quite frankly, I’m also not that great at most trivia games. That probably reflects poorly on me since I write articles about game shows on the internet, but oh well.
One other thing I’m awful at is shopping. Every once in a while, someone in my family might ask me to pick up one or two things from the supermarket. Folks, if you ever saw me in a supermarket, you would think I’d never been there before in my life. Sometimes it’ll take me 10 flippin minutes to find just a few items in the produce aisle.
There’s a lot of useless junk in my brain, but I’ll probably never remember exactly where to find scallions at my local Key Food. I’m willing to admit that I’m probably one of the worst grocery shoppers out there. Fortunately, I think there’s at least one game show contestant who has me beat.
If you’ve ever watched Supermarket Sweep, you know that the highlight of the show is the Big Sweep. Three contestants race through the market trying to fill their carts with as much money’s worth of groceries as possible, while Johnny Gilbert provides borderline frenetic play-by-play commentary.
During one particularly infamous episode of Supermarket Sweep, Jeff and Barb answered just one question right prior to the Big Sweep, which meant that they had the least time to shop out of the three teams. Jeff tried to make up for this deficit by focusing on the shopping list. If he managed to find three specific items, he would earn $250 for his team. There’s just one problem.
That was the ONLY thing Jeff focused on.
With just 1 minute and 40 seconds on his clock, Jeff didn’t bring a cart with him, because he only cared about the shopping list. 1 minute and 20 seconds later, he still only had one of the three necessary items in his hands: a box of Nabisco Frosted Wheat Squares.
Eventually, the show cuts to Jeff with 15 seconds on the clock. He’s looking for a can of Stagg Chili Laredo, which is the second item on the shopping list. He picks up the wrong chili at first, but eventually finds the right one. At this point, it’s too little too late, because he doesn’t have nearly enough time to find the third shopping list item: a box of Hungry Jack mashed potatoes.
While the other players were filling their carts with the standard meat, cheese, diapers, and whatnot, Jeff had no cart whatsoever. He finished the Big Sweep with 2 items in his hands, no bonuses, and no chance of winning the game. His opponents Kristen and Kristi finished with a total of $893, which ended up being the winning score. How much money did Jeff rack up, you ask?
Yeah that’s not great.
Jeff went down in Supermarket Sweep history for all the wrong reasons. $7 is the worst Big Sweep total from David Ruprecht’s time hosting the show, and I’m willing to bet that it’s the worst score ever. Going straight for the shopping list (and doing nothing else) was quite possibly the worst thing Jeff could have done, because the $250 bonus wouldn’t have been nearly enough to win the game. Even if he did manage to find all 3 items, he’d still have to grab another $650 or so in groceries and bonuses to win.
To be 100% fair, the odds of Jeff winning the game were slim to begin with, since he had so little time to shop. Both teams had a head start of at least a minute, so it would have taken a miracle for Jeff and Barb to come out on top anyway. Don’t get me wrong, going for the shopping list wasn’t a mistake in and of itself. But Jeff went about it in the worst way possible.
Since he didn’t have a cart, he wasn’t able to pick up other items along the way, which massively hampered his scoring potential. Every second he wastes looking for chili is a second he could have spent picking up turkeys… or salami… or literally anything else whatsoever. If you want to complete the shopping list and also win the game, you have to be able to multitask, especially when you’re at a time disadvantage.
On the other hand, a record is a record. Being the best at something is a reason to be proud of yourself, but being the WORST at something is pretty funny in its own way. As you can probably imagine, I have no idea what Jeff has been up to in the last 30something years. If I were him though, I think I would enjoy sharing my stories about this episode.
When groups of people are asked to share a fun fact about themselves, it’s pretty common for a few folks to struggle to come up with something. Jeff holds a record on a game show, which is a pretty cool fun fact if you ask me. The fact that he actually sucked royally at said game show is still a good way to break the ice. So at the very least, Jeff has that going for him.
