Many of you are spending today at the supermarket getting the last minute items for your Easter celebration or items you are taking to a host or hostess’s home. Many of you are on the final days of purchasing for the Passover holiday. If you have spent anytime in the supermarkets there are definitely things that could be done better by the stores and also the customers who shop there. Here is my top 10 peeves about supermarkets:
In no particular order
- People leaving their carts in the middle of the aisles
- Not enough cashiers
- The shopping aisles are too narrow
- People who CAN shop during the day who choose shop when most day workers are coming in.
- Supermarkets leaving picked over displays of sale items so you take the bad product.- the asparagus yesterday at the store is a prime example.
- People who come to the check out line not prepared to check out. You know you are going to have to pay for this, why do you wait until they have given you the total to pull out your wallet/checkbook/credit card.
- Emergency need of a bathroom – why aren’t they marked?
- The cell phone chatter ~ honestly I don’t care about your carbuncles and you are blocking the item I want to purchase.
- It says 10 items only – need I say more.
- Baggers who don’t know what they are doing and bagging delicate items at the bottom of the bag.
- My bonus peeve: A dirty store
I know you have your own pet peeves about supermarkets, please share, don't let my voice be the only one heard here. Leave your comments here.
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Comments
Dara,
Great article as always. I have worked at a family grocery store my entire life (been in our family for 50 years). It's a single chain, probably the size of a Safeway, Food Lion or small Giant. I can touch on a couple of your peeves and explain them (or elaborate on them).
2) Not enough cashiers - the grocery business is a VERY small margin business (the staple items - bread, milk, eggs - grocers usually make less than 20% gross on...that is tiny). Sale items are even smaller margins and most people are sale shoppers getting 50-70% of their items on sale each time through. Having the minimal amount of help is a necessity and a constant challenge, balancing cust. service with financial needs.
3) This is a huge problem. Open air is wasted space, grocers limit that as much as they can (we expanded our store by 25% with very little added product to address this issue).
5) Most markets have their produce people work early shifts to have it ready for the day. Late in t
...Late in the day, produce tends to get run down and not worked until the following morning. Again, it's a cost thing. Most markets won't pay an employee for a night shift of just "straightening up."
7) Grocery stores are high shrink business (lots of theft). Especially from kids. Bathrooms are their prime place to take items to in order to steal. They are generally not marked to make this more difficult. Most employees are happy to point you in the right direction, but markets don't usually advertise "Here's a great place to steal." lol.
10) Bagging is important. We train ours thoroughly and do not leave them there if they can't do it right. Shame you have dealt with poor ones...it's not a hard job!
A lot of these boil down to financial concerns. Everyone is bargain hunting these days and in a small margin business, you have to cut costs EVERYWHERE. Not that these make for good excuses, just a little insight for you.
Thanks for the great piece!
Tom
Tom: Always good to hear from you and thank you for the insight to the retailer.
Bathrooms? You have bathrooms in your supermarket, and you're complaining? Up here, they point you to the curb outside.
Or how about people who still write checks for their groceries...? Please!
Great article - Dara! I agree on most of the peeves you have listed - those that stem from the customers themselves mostly. People today have no manners and are totally selfish when it comes to their actions....like standing in front of the shelves chatting on their cell phones. And when you asked them to please move a step away..they look at you totally indignant... you dared to impose on them.
Also - leaving carts anywhere in the middle of the store while they walk away to pick up something 10 feet away from them and you have to move their cart to pass it.
The other thing that annoys me is when you find a package of meat in the cookie section and ice cream in the baking section. It is so rude to do that........to the store in particular. Don't people know that food spoils if it is not in its proper place? Well, I too could go on forever...Thank you for writing this article, may be it will cause some people to think and change their behavior going to the store the next time.
One that ALWAYS gets on my nerves: shoppers that are not looking for anything in particular, but still walk as slowly as humanly possible in front of you - or even worse, just stop for no reason. Nobody in front of them, nothing in particular they are reaching for. They just stop for the purpose of stopping. Wegman's shoppers, this means you.
That was the worst list ever. Sorry.
Dara, hands down my biggest complaint is about how cashiers stuff my grocery bags until they are so heavy that not only do I have trouble lifting them, but the cashiers struggle to pick them up. If the cashier can't lift that bag that has a half gallon of milk, two containers of juice, a large yogurt, and a pint of cream how the hell am I expected to? And the bag full of canned goods, pasta sauce, and chicken broth? I need a forklift to pick that up.
It's not as though I don't provide enough bags. I usually walk into a store with 8 to 12. Sure enough, the cashiers cram everything into 3 or four. Sometimes I ask to have bags repacked. Other times, I just do it myself in the parking lot.
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