I’ve seen a lot of people on here be teased for difficulty expressing themselves. Either people complain “you’re using big person words to describe mundane things” when they’re aiming for precision or “woah, we don’t need that damn wall of text” when they’re aiming for clarity. It’s like people just want to complain.
Honestly, I don’t think the second one is a mess (except punctuation). I think it just conveys - or at least suggests - that something out of the ordinary is happening. It takes mundane things and makes you question them, given the extra attention given to the normal things like a name or place. Sounds like John maybe isn’t his real name and maybe he’s going to this store for something other than groceries.