Shopping PTSD?

I suffer from a serious affliction: I cannot find things in stores.

The way that grocery stores are configured is especially confusing. I'm a pro at finding staples such as bread and milk, but when I need to purchase something that is not something I normally use, like say, corn syrup, its never where I suppose it to be (really grocery stockers, you placed it by the maple syrup?!). In instances such as these, the item in question is literally in the last place I look, only because it is the LAST possible place to look.

Some might call it stupidity but I feel that I am a highly intelligent person. Thus, although my affliction will not be found in the DSM-IV, I feel like it is a great oversight that the DSM-IV does not include the inability to find things in stores, ever.

This affliction is enhanced by the fact that the staff are never available when I need them, typically passing by before I am looking for the elusive item on my list (and I am definitely not a plan ahead type girl. Also, despite recognizing that I have this inability to find things in stores, I am in deep denial of this fact and always think that this time I will be able to find it). Or more likely. I fail to ask the employees where an item is located when they do happen to pass because of my crippling fear of people (its a rough life I lead, but some of the employees are grumpy or scary looking or both...). This means that I spend a great deal of time at stores searching for random items placed in even more random places throughout the store.

Yesterday, I decided to immerse myself in a shopping trip in search of several odd items needed to help create my awesome Halloween costume. The trip was successful in that I found the items I was looking for. It was less successful when looked at from a productive-use of time point of view. I wandered up and down the aisles multiple times, walked across the store, walked back across the store wandered the aisles again and so forth because along with my inability to locate items in the store, I also have a terrible memory and kept remembering stuff that I needed to pick up and then I had to go locate the problem.

Despite these stressful afflictions of lackluster finding skills and a poor memory, I'm pretty good at keeping cool under pressure. I'm also an expert at giving up, so I don't get too down about leaving empty handed...because obviously I have bigger issues to deal with than finding ALL of the ingredients for a new recipe I wanted to try out