Heads up, 7UP: Associated Market Does Free Delivery

Tired of heavy plastic bags cutting into the cold palms of your hands as you make your way home from the grocery store? Overestimate your ability to lug home laundry detergent, cat litter, a crate of clementines and 6 other bags of shit? Fear no more! The helpful staff at Associated Market will deliver your goods -- for free! Simply write your name & address on a post-it and they'll box up your goods and send you on your way, swinging your empty hands as you skip down 5th Avenue.

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Commercial Shoot Invades Park Slope With Mean Sociological Experiment.

Photo via Jordanhoffman.com

Last Friday I dropped by Associated Market on 5th Ave. My mission was simple: buy toilet paper.

As the cashier checks me out, loud bells ring and colorful balloons pour from the ceiling.  A man in a sharp suit emerges holding a giant check as an eager reporter bobs a microphone in a shocked man’s face. The cameras roll. “Congratulations sir," the man in the suit says. "You’re our millionth customer! You just won $50,000.00!” 

As they whisk him away, a woman starts yelling about how the man cut her in line and she’s entitled to the winnings. They tell her to take it up with the manager and ignore her as she storms out in a fury. Her acting was poor though, so I start to think I'm in the midst of an Improv Everywhere skit. At the very least, this was a familiar scene I'd viewed on that show What Would You Do? I ask the cashier what the deal is and she gives me an awkward smile. She can’t say anything.

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