You had a list. Trader Joe’s had other plans.

There are few grocery stores that can rewrite your list within the first five minutes, but Trader Joe’s has built an entire business model around it. You go in for one specific item—let’s say the vegan spinach and cashew ravioli that Reddit has argued tastes better than homemade. That’s the plan. You expect to be in and out in eight minutes.

Wrath

“It’s fine. It’s totally fine.”

First, there’s the parking lot, which appears to have been designed by someone who has never actually operated a vehicle. Cars idle with their blinkers on, waiting out shoppers who are still inside deciding between sparkling waters. Two more circle the same open spot, neither willing to give up first. Someone in a Prius has been holding a spot with the engine running.

You park at the Dave & Buster’s next door and walk over, passing an abandoned cart halfway between the two lots.

Pride

“I have a vision.”

The flowers are the first thing inside the door, and the woman ahead of you is already elbow-deep in the dahlia bucket like she’s defusing something. Fall means sunflowers, ornamental peppers, little pumpkins, and women who already know exactly where all of them are going on a table you’ll never see. Two of them reach for the same bunch of rust-colored dahlias at once, and only one lets go.

A bouquet ends up in your arms before you’ve even grabbed a cart.

Envy

“Wait, what is that?”

You finally make it to the ravioli section, and it’s empty. There’s no sold-out tag or restock date, just cold plastic where the bag should be and a gap in the freezer case exactly the size of the thing you drove 20 minutes for.

A woman restocking pasta sauce asks if you’re finding everything okay. You tell her you’re fine because saying, “I only came here for the vegan ravioli I read about on Reddit, and now I’m standing in front of an empty freezer case,” makes the trip sound less reasonable than it already is. Then you notice the woman in the next aisle.

Her cart holds a loaf of pumpkin sourdough and something unidentifiable wrapped in shiny gold. You don’t know what the gold thing is, and you don’t particularly care. You only know that she has one and you don’t.

You head for the bread aisle and grab your own loaf. A few steps later, you spot a stack of the gold things on an endcap below a hand-drawn, cheeky sign. It’s a seasonal candle. You take one, telling yourself you’ll Google what “Falling Leaves” is supposed to smell like once you’re in the car.

Greed

“You’re already here.”

You make your way toward the nut butter. The brand you usually buy at the health food store is $12. Trader Joe’s version is $7, so you take two jars, then a crunchy one, then a sunflower seed butter you don’t need but justify because it comes from a different plant. A box of stone-ground crackers goes in too, trusted without tasting because enough strangers online have vouched for it.

On the way past the greeting cards, you remember that you haven’t bought one in more than a year and take nine. You have birthdays coming up, although you’re not sure whose, and this seems like the kind of preparation that will feel impressive when you find the cards in the drawer two weeks after the occasion.

Sloth

“It’s basically homemade.”

In produce, you collect broccoli crowns because pre-chopped foods are where you draw the line—except for the garlic, which comes pre-minced, sitting two feet from the whole bulbs you’re ignoring. A loaf of banana bread goes in too, since baking one yourself means locating the right pan and catching the bananas at the exact moment they stop being edible and start becoming a project.

Then the freezer aisle finishes the job: rice that steams in its own bag, dumplings that steam in their own bag, and a jar of sauce claiming to be restaurant-quality. It’s a full dinner that requires exactly one pan and no decisions you’d actually call cooking.

You chop the broccoli that night. The banana bread gets eaten in slices off a napkin, because washing another plate seems unnecessary.

Gluttony

“You’ll definitely eat all of this.”

At the sample station, you take a cup of the cauliflower gnocchi, tell the employee you’re “just deciding,” and go back for a second one 15 seconds later, because it’s free and you’re still standing there.

You put a bag of the gnocchi in the cart and keep shopping, adding a container of dark chocolate peanut butter cups, dried mango to convince yourself it cancels out the chocolate, and two boxes of the Pumpkin Joe-Joe’s you buy every year without remembering if you finished last year’s box.

Lust

“You just really like the way it smells.”

In the beauty aisle, caramel body butter is stacked three tubs deep and you pick one up mostly to smell it. Then you smell it again and briefly wonder if slathering yourself in it is enough to make someone overlook the fact that your “good” bra is technically old enough to vote, which is a rather inappropriate thought to have next to shampoo. It’s not something you needed before you saw it, and it’s not something you’ll remember to use once it’s sitting in your bathroom cabinet next to three other lotions that are all technically still usable. You buy it anyway.

At the register, the total comes to $100.

“Did you find everything you were looking for?” the cashier asks.

You tell him yes.

You came for a $4 bag of ravioli. You never found it.