For those of you who have thought me a loony in my denouncements of Mall Wart and other Big Pox stores, you’ve just listed many of the reasons why I loved Ed’s Hardware. Once you learned where wood screws were stocked, you went there without assistance, and you’d find what you wanted, because Ed had better things to do than move the damned screws. 
I’ve got a lot of sympathy for the guys who have to decide how to arrange stuff in grocery stores.
Consider a super-competent, customer-friendly manager who wants nothing more than to have shoppers find exactly what they want as quickly as possible. Clearly the way to do this is to put things where the customer expects to find them…but there’s the rub.
Where DOES the customer expect to find things?
Consider jars of spaghetti sauce. Spaghetti sauce is mostly tomatoes, right? So maybe it should go in the same aisle as the tomato paste cans and tomato sauce cans and crushed tomato cans and pureed tomato cans… . But…hmmm. What about ketchup? And tomato juice? As “mostly tomato” foodstuffs, should they be in that same aisle? But…won’t the customers expect to find the tomato juice close to the grapefruit and pineapple juices? And the ketchup clearly should be near the mustards and pickle relish…
But maybe the customer thinks more in terms of what-is-needed-with-what, and thus most likely expects the spaghetti sauce to be near the pastas? And the grated cheese…but then why isn’t that cheese near all the other cheeses in the dairy case? Or possibly over in the deli? Or near the case where we display the special imported cheeses?
And, if we have a ‘Mexican foods’ area, and a ‘Chinese foods’ are, do we need an ‘Italian foods’ area? Then the spaghetti sauce and most of the pastas could go there. But…what about the loaves of Italian bread? And the frozen pizzas?
And on, and on. Outside of items with over-riding practical considerations (like the ice cream simply HAS to go in the freezers) I bet you could make valid arguments for putting any given item into several different groupings.
It’s enough to drive you mad. Maybe to the point of deciding that the jars of honey obviously ‘belong’ in the ceral aisle. Huh? I really don’t get that one. Does ANYONE put honey on cereal? Why not put it with the sugar and molasses and such? Oh, nevermind.
Anyway, I try to view the rearrangements as someone’s newest well-intentioned even if mis-guided theory on How Stuff Should Be Logically Grouped.
Though sometimes I fail. 
In the most recent rearrangement of the local store, all the peanut butter vanished from the aisle that still had all the jelly and marshmallow fluff and such. Where did it go? It took me two full trips from one end of the store to the other (when I was in a hurry, dammit) peering hopefully down each aisle before I at last stumbled on it. Where? Why, hiding halfway down the bread aisle, with the regular ‘sandwich’ breads to its right and the ‘non-sandwich’ types of breads to its left.
Which sorta makes sense, true, though why the jelly didn’t move along with the peanut butter escapes me.
It’s not just Wal-Mart. For Mom & Pops, it is a must to keep the place looking fresh & new (according to my friends that run small businesses–you have to rearrange the stores frequently, period). Personally it’s more annoying to me when a place lets all their displays & signs & merchandise fade from sunlight. That implies to me the owner doesn’t care at all about the store, and by extension, doesn’t care about his/her customers.
Reminds me of Kinder’s in my home town. The screws never moved because they were in floor to ceiling drawer units the size of a Manhattan studio apartment. It would have been easier for them to demolish and re-build the store.
I’m in fear of this swoopy RiteAid layout. The one by my office is bad enough with the shelves set in a sort of herringbone scheme. The only thing I ever go there for is my prescriptions, and it’s almost easier to go around the block to the rear entrance to avoid zig-zagging past the alarm clocks, ice cream and souvenier cable cars.
Quite a few years ago, the grocery near home decided that the days of Jewel Foods on one side and Osco Drugs as a separate store were over. For months, there was no telling where things were going to be as walls were knocked out, the deli and meat sections moved entirely, and much of the store was laid out in an IKEA-style maze, which almost made sense as you’d eventually find the soup if you followed the path. One incident burned in my head was near the deli’s interim home. An irritated man grumped up to the deli and bellowed “Where the hell’s the soap!” At the same instant, an 8-pack of pop bottles slid off the bottom rack on someone’s cart and pop was spraying every direction.
A few years later, I was working at a different supermarket, and they decided to do a “reset” and store-wide, they narrowed each aisle just enough to add an aisle on either side of frozen foods, which was in the center of the store.
During the reset, we were forced to keep much of our stock in the back and fetch it when customers asked for it. Bleah!
I realize my little bookstore isn’t the “50-acre store” that you’re ranting about, commasense, but let me explain a few of the reasons this happens:
[ul]
[li]New products come out, old ones go away. When low-carb diets became the fad, grocery stores needed to find a place to put low-carb foods. That meant moving other stuff.[/li][li]Store owners want you to be able to find “hot” products quickly. Today, Harry Potter books are in the young adult section of my store near the back. A month ago, they were on a table clearly visible from the front door, with a big cardboard Harry Potter standup and a bunch of signs.[/li][li]Seasonal changes. At the moment, I have several shelves of hiking books. In three months, I’ll be down to one shelf of hiking books and I’ll be moving other things into the vacated space.[/li][li]Adjusting to what people buy. We don’t sell a whole lot of political books at the moment. I used to have a big section for them up front. Now they’re in with the other nonfiction near the back. If books about left-handed eyeglass ratchets become incredibly popular, I’ll be moving them to the front.[/li][li]Experimenting. I reorganized the Magic: The Gathering stuff three times before people really seemed happy with it and they could easily find what they wanted.[/li][li]Trying to improve the store (see below)[/li][/ul]
What StarvingButStrong said requires a whole separate response. In a retail store, you have to put things where people will look for them, not where it’s “right.” For example, I had Inferno shelved under “A,” and nobody could find it. They’d look under “D,” and either assume we didn’t have it or ask for help. The author’s name is Dante Alighieri (hence my filing under “A”), but everyone remembers “Dante’s Inferno.” I moved it to the D’s.
Authors like Ivan Doig and Tom Clancy write both fiction and nonfiction, but people expect all of their books to be together. I know that Armored Cav is nonfiction, but people look for it with the other Clancy stuff in the fiction section.
Stocking a store is more of an art than a science. I understand your complaints, commasense, and I’ll acknowledge that there is a manipulative theory behind making you walk past stuff you don’t want to get to what you do want. On the other hand, you need to realize that rearranging stores is an expensive pain in the neck. We don’t do it just for fun. We do it because we have to.
That was really informative InvisibleWombat! I’ve always wondered why certain books were placed where they were!
That said, I don’t mind when bookstores rearrange stuff! In fact, I even sort of like it. Bookstores are designed for browsing! They’re just way cool places to spend hours in. I love walking past a shelf I’ve seen a hundred times before only to discover new books on it! Books I hadn’t considered! Books I hadn’t heard of! Lots and lots of way cool books!
Thanks, MaddyStrut. My father owned a hardware store and shelving was much easier for them. They very rarely had to rearrange anything because there just aren’t that many earth-shattering changes, except for stuff like Robinson square drive screws suddenly becoming popular. You know, one power tool goes out and another comes in, but it just doesn’t change that much.
In the book business, everything is in flux all the time. Books go out of print. Thousands of new books come out each month. Someone writes a bestseller (Dan Brown, for instance, with Da Vinci Code) and all of his old books (Angels and Demons, Digital Fortress, etc.) suddenly become popular.
Figuring out where to put books is really difficult. If a local author writes a new children’s guidebook to backyard birds, do you put it with the bird books, the children’s books, or in the local author section? (answer: all three) When an author puts out an anthology with both stories (fiction) and essays (nonfiction), and slides a bunch of poetry in between, where on earth do you shelve it?
I love the business, though. My store’s small enough that I can personally greet almost everyone that comes in the door, and they know they can ask me for help. The books may not always be where you’d expect them to be, but I know how to find darned near everything.
Yes! And all those cards these stores make you use now-a-days record your purchases. Those records are put in a data warehouse where some guy can run queries to see what patterns there are. Once they determine patterns, they rearrange the mechandise. One good example is: They discovered if you put diapers and beer on the same isle, you’d sell more beer. Someone runs in for a pack of diapers, sees the beer, and “impulses” a beer purchase.
Walmart, last I knew, had the largest data warehouse in the world.
Staving, do you live in the north east? Market Basket did this starting about six or nine months ago. I do not like running to the jelly and peanut butter aisle only to discover that the peanut butter has left without a forwarding address. This requires me to wander cases thinking things like “if I were peanut butter, where would I be? With the fucking jelly, but no. Where the hell else could I be?” Finally I find it with the bread. Hmm.
Next time I go to get the jelly, and it’s fucking gone too, no longer nestled along side the canned fruits. No, it’s relocated itself with it’s long lost love, peanut butter, in the bread aisle. I guess that sort of makes sense.
Another visit and I want fruit to bring to work. But now it’s not even in the aisle that once held it, jelly, peanut butter and candy. It’s with the fucking pickles. Why the hell did they put the canned fruit with the pickles and miracle whip?
And for the love of god, why does Jiffy and Bisquick keep moving from the cereal aisle, to the baking aisle, and then back, half the time taking the pancake mixes with it, and half not?
Stop moving things, you assholes! I don’t care if things are logically grouped or not, as long as I can find the goddamn things I want without asking one of the useless twats who works for you who also hasn’t a damn clue where things are this week.
Yup! 
Which is an excellent point. When they do these strange rearrangement, would it kill them to stick up a little sign at the old site that says “Peanut butter is in aisle 8 near the bread”?
Amen. I’ve sometimes fantasized about a store with the goods arranged alphabetically…then realized that might mean that Skippy peanut butter is under the S’s while Jiff is over with the J’s… :smack:
Somewhat non-related…
I was wondering when Wal*Mart will get into the healthcare field (they’re trying to get into banking now).
But I imagine that quality might suffer. But affordable healthcare would be so nice…
I don’t mind seasonal stuff moving. I don’t mind finding a spot for new stuff. I do mind that diapers moved at Target three times while my kids wore them (that’s about four years). I mind that when I run into Target for the laundry detergent they’ve always carried, its now on the other end of the store. And just about the time I get used to it, they move it again.
My time is valuable. I shop at Target because I can get in, grab laundry detergent and get out. If I can’t do that, Target is no longer an effective place for me to get laundry detergent. If I’m going to browse and shop, Target isn’t my choice.
On the other hand, Target doesn’t want me doing that. Laundry detergent doesn’t have much margin - its often even a loss leader. I can understand discouraging my “run in and end up costing Target money” behavior patterns. But then Target has to understand when I buy my detergent at the grocery store because its not worth the 20 cent price break to deal with Target.