Grocery store question, part 2

In My Humble Opinion
1

MagicalSilverKey’s thread about eating in the grocery store reminded me of an odd thing that happened to me about a year ago. It had never happened to me before and it really pissed me off.

It was mid-February and I had just finished a big ugly work project (I’m self-employed and work at home). I decided to celebrate by taking the afternoon off and going to a really nice grocery store we had just found in our area, and buying the goods for a nice dinner. It was a really crappy, icky day weather-wise, but I was still in a good mood as I drove to the store, about 20 minutes away.

I didn’t have a list, so I grabbed a handbasket and ambled the aisles, planning dinner as I went. Over the next half-hour, I filled the basket with mostly nonperishables – a lot of cans as well as a 5-pound bag of potatoes.

I had gotten back to the end of the store nearest the checkouts when I realized that I wanted to look at the balloons, about five aisles over. By this time my basket had gotten heavy, so I set it on the floor, out of the way next to the end of an aisle. I was gone maybe five minutes. When I returned, my basket had disappeared! I checked several aisles, but nope, it was gone. So I went up to the service desk to ask if they had seen it. “Oh, we put all that stuff away. We thought it was abandoned.”

WHAT THE FUCK??? I was gone five minutes!! The store employees claimed that the reason for this policy is that people routinely abandon their carts, and they “have no way of knowing whether the food has been there five minutes or fifty.” OK -— let’s dissect this reasoning. (1) Did anyone check the contents of the basket? The most perishable thing in there was a bag of shredded Parmesan cheese; surely this could have lasted another fifteen minutes. (2) This occurred around 2 p.m. on a Thursday afternoon; the store wasn’t exactly packed. Would it have killed them to skim the store, looking for shoppers without carts and asking whether the basket was theirs, before reshelving? In fact, the clerk would have to have been standing right next to me, near the balloon display, to put the Parmesan back in the dairy case; if she had simply noticed that I had no basket and asked if it was mine, my aggravation could have been avoided. (3) I assume the store has a P.A. system; a simple announcement to the effect of, “Would the shopper who left a basket near the front of the store please come to the service desk?” would have avoided this situation also. (4) A cart or basket containing perishables could be moved to a cooler for a designated period, or perhaps just the perishables removed, and the announcement made, to avoid this situation. (5) What about shoppers who need to use the restroom? There isn’t room in there for a cart, even if they did allow people to take unpurchased items in there. And what about elderly people, disabled people, or parents with small children who might conceivably be in there a while? Will their shopping disappear too?

Another excuse the store people gave was that I should have notified a clerk that I was leaving my basket and have the person watch it for me. OK, so now if I’m at the back of the store and need to use the restroom, I should either shag down a clerk back there and assign him or her to watch my stuff, or haul it up to the front of the store, defeating the whole point of leaving it in the first place? And suppose this person gets distracted by, of all things, helping another customer or otherwise doing his or her job? When this person’s back is turned, what’s to keep another clerk from deciding that another load of groceries has been “abandoned”?

Anyway, the incident pissed me off so much that I didn’t feel like doing my shopping all over again, so I just drove home in the rain, madder than hell, and we had spaghetti as usual. I asked about this at our local grocery store, and they said they would never put away someone’s cart unless it was there all day – people almost never abandon carts and leave their store, and spoilage is just a cost of doing business. I wrote a polite but emphatic letter to the store manager (in fact, borrowed from it for part of this post, to save time), and he wrote me back, basically telling me “thanks for writing, but get fucked.” I don’t shop there anymore.

Anybody else have stories or comments on this?

2

Scarlett, I’m picturing this happening in the MegaMart, or whatever name it goes by where you live. I’d write it off as the cost of living in the big old impersonal USA. People do abandon full carts and baskets in grocery stores, and the employees do have to re-shelve the items. You just got caught by a clerk trying to do his job.

One time in a restaurant, I got up to use the rest room shortly after being served. When I returned, my table was cleared and set for another customer. My whole meal was just gone! I explained to the manager what happened, and he was nice enough to order me a new meal, so it wasn’t as bad as your experience.

3

Yeah, I could see that in a big urban area, but I live in Smallville, USA. This was a medium-sized Sentry store in a small town. We just don’t do impersonal around here.

At the time, I polled another cybergroup I participate in, and the consensus seemed to be that this does happen. It still sucks!

4

Sorry, Scarlett, I WANT to side with you on this one but I can’t. The actions of the store seem totally reasonable to me; frankly they even seem commendable.

As a customer, I don’t want to see abandoned carts/baskets lying around, and the store policy to clear them up ASAP strike me as prudent on three counts: no sloppy clutter on the sales floor, no traffic blockers, and no perishables going bad. (Yes, I know you had no perishables, but their policy rightly errs on the side of caution.)

I think it’s not too much to ask that you carry your cart/basket wherever you go, or at least keep it in constant sight. If you must leave it for any period, say to go to the restroom, you should notify a clerk.

5

I agree with Stuyguy. Also, most people with the little hand-held baskets are doing quick shopping anyway, not likely to need to leave it around. And the big ones with wheels don’t suffer from getting too heavy for the shopper. You situation was pretty unique. Also, I can’t fault the store for not wanting merchandise lying around making the store look cluttered.

6

Yep, gotta side with stuyguy and xizor on this. To make matters worse, it sounds like you left the basket right by a checkout lane which is where, I would imagine, they most often find abandoned merchandise (people get to the counter and realize they forgot their wallet, etc.).

As to your suggestions, they would have no idea how long it was sitting there (should they mark it with chalk like parking enforecement?), having a clerk wander around asking anyone without a cart if they left a basket is kind of time consuming, and using the P.A. system would just get annoying to everyone else (would they need to repeat the announcement a couple of times in case the person missed it the first time around?) and, as most of the carts/baskets they find probably are in fact abandoned, again a waste of time.

Sorry, but IMHO you sould have taken the basket with you, or notified the check-out clerk that are going to pick something else out and will be back.

7

OK, that might work if, as in this case, I’m near the checkouts, it’s a basket, and/or the store is not busy. The checkout clerk could just set it aside. But what if the store is busy, the checkout aisles are piled full, and I have a cart? The checkout clerks have too much else to do. Is a stock clerk really going to stand guard over my cart for me? I doubt it. Again, if the person I asked gets busy, there goes my stuff. What if I had written a little note – “please don’t restock – I’m still shopping”? That seems to get a little silly.

Are you all telling me that you always keep your cart or basket with you, that you never run over to aisle three for the bread you forgot without hauling the whole cart along? I find that a pain in a busy store. I see unattended carts and baskets all the time – often with a purse in them, but that’s another security issue. And I’ve been doing this (periodically, not every time I shop) at different stores for 15 years and never had a problem before.

I suppose the thing that irks me is the assumption that I (or “a shopper,” to remove the personal element) was being a jerk, like those who leave a package of hamburger or a bucket of ice cream in the soup aisle. That’s deliberate asininity. It would have taken them one minute to put the basket in a cooler in case someone came back in a few minutes. (Remember, 5 minutes after I came back they had it all restocked already! Jeez Louise, how about giving the customer the benefit of the doubt! I wouldn’t have expected it to be there an hour later, but 5 freaking minutes?) When someone finds a large amount of money, there’s a waiting period before the finder can claim it; the
assumption is that the person who lost the money might want it back. Not so if you find $5 or even $20; you wouldn’t even report it. I wouldn’t have minded if it had been 3 or 4 things in the basket (easy enough to regather), but it was a half-hour’s worth of shopping and a good 30 items. I would have liked to have a little longer chance to reclaim them and not have wasted my time.

Another thought – funny how over in MSK’s grovery thread it seems to be OK to claim possession of (eat) items before they’re paid for, but here, putting them in your basket is not enough of a claim.

Yikes, maybe I should have started this in the Pit. Yeah, I know, it shouldn’t still piss me off after this long – I just dont like getting screwed just because other people (cart-abandoners) must be assholes.

8

Scarlet, a checkout clerk doesn’t necessarily have to stand and gaurd your cart, all while twiddling his thumbs. He can do two things at once.

You could have pushed the cart through an unoccupied checkout lane (even when the store is busy, there are always a few empty checkout lanes), pushed it to a counter manned by a cashier, and asked this cashier to leave your cart with him while you did your thing.

This cashier would still be able to tend to his cashier duties and if any employee tried to move the cart, he would simply notify his coworker that a customer had left it there to be watched by him.

As for your other point about bringing your cart to each and every aisle even if you forget something? Well, I actually do do this. I do it because I don’t want anyone taking it (the cart or the items in it).

9

I mostly agree with the people who thought that the store was doing their job, and you should have taken the basket with you, or let a clerk know that you were coming back for it.

On the other hand, I also think that it wouldn’t have hurt much for the store to keep it at customer service for 15 minutes, in case someone was coming back for it. Not much is going to go bad in that amount of time, and no one should be reasonably leaving a basket or cart for a longer period of time.

If you were longer than 10-15 minutes, then I don’t blame the store for putting it away.

10

Here is another danger: when I was in college, my room mate and I were rather impish in the grocery store. If we came upon on unguarded cart, we would add random items to it. The thinking was that the owner would not realize unti he/she got the groceries home that they just purchased 3 boxes of cheese flavored toothpicks :smiley:

11

I agree that they shouldn’t have been so fast to take your basket away, however I have people come into the store all the time that maybe look at the line in the check out and feel that they don’t have time to wait 5 minutes (after spending 1/2 hour in the store) so they put their basket down and leave. Maybe this is what the grocery shop employees thought as they were unloading your basket. Remember most of the time they only get paid minimum wage, with NO tips, so why should they babysitt/trip over your basket?!

12

Scarlett67, while I understand your frustration, the store did nothing wrong. I have had the opposite happen to me a few times: I get to the checkout and the lines are long and hardly moving so, after a while, i am so frustrated I abandon all my shopping and head for home. I suppose someone comes by and oputs them back where they belong.

In any case, what I do not understand is the concept that if something bad happens it has to be somebody’s fault. I think shit happens and it does not have to be anybody’s fault but if you just have to find someone responsible for this incident I think you should look in the mirror.

13

First of all, thank you, lola. That is precisely my point – they jumped on it way too fast.

xizor, you are naughty! :smiley:

Re “babysitting,” as you put it: So minimum-wage employees should not be expected to help customers, because they make too little? Is the level of customer service to be based on how much the employees make? It’s not my fault they agreed to work for low wages. Isn’t customer service part of any job that puts you in contact with the public? And we’re talking about keeping an eye on a basket of groceries for a few minutes, not painting my house. But I don’t want to bother the clerks with watching my stuff – just to be able to leave it unattended for a few minutes.

As for tripping over it, I didn’t leave it in the middle of the aisle. It was tucked up flat against the shelves, even under the upper part of the display. And the store was nearly empty. You would have had to try really hard to trip over it.

Let me get this straight, sailor: You’re too lazy and impatient to wait in line or put your stuff back, so you make the store employees pick up after you, and then tell me it’s my fault [below] that so many people do this that clerks automatically restock abandoned groceries they find? That’s one crazy piece of logic.

**

<not taking the bait on the personal attack>
Yeah, shit happens and there are way worse problems in the world. Yadda yadda yadda. But I find it hard to believe that our society has come to the point where we can’t turns our backs on non-valuable items in public places for five minutes without having people fuck with stuff that is bothering no one.

Some examples:
Would the situation be different if I had been in a department store and my basket had contained aspirin, some socks, a couple of CDs, and a box of Fiddle Faddle?

How many students here? Do you ever go to the library or the dorm lounge to study? Spread out all your stuff on a table in the corner? Get thirsty after an hour, or have to pee? Do you really pack up all your stuff and take it with you to the restroom or the soda machine? I never did. Left it there (except I probably took my purse/wallet with me), and it was there when I got back.

There’s a waterpark near me that allows carry-ins and has lots of picnic tables. People bring coolers and set up a place for their stuff, then leave it at a table with their towels, shoes, etc. while they swim. (There are lockers for wallets, keys, etc.) Should the park staff cruise around during the day and throw away the stuff in these little picnic zones just because no one is hovering over it?

How about TNTruth’s example of the restaurant where the table was cleared when TNT went to the bathroom?

Once again, read carefully, folks. I’m not saying the store had no right to restock, just that with a little care, and allowing a little more time (15 minutes instead of 5), they could have avoided an angry (ex-)customer.

14

Scarlett: while you may not be suggesting that the store NOT restock, you are suggesting that they shouldn’t have restocked your items before you were ready. Exactly how should they have determined this? Remember, you didn’t share any information with anyone, and weren’t there to ask. To suggest that the store should call out over the PA is asking, I think, a bit much “would the shopper who’s buying the extra small condoms please retrieve your basket?”

The people who have suggested to you that you may have been quick to get peeved also have a point. You want the employee to know a. how long the basket had been sitting there, b. that you intended to come back, and soon, and c. there was nothing perishable in there anyhow.

Point being that they are employees of the store. PART of their job is customer service - ALL customers. That would include the customer that had to step around or over or was in any way inconvenienced by something on the floor that shouldn’t have been. that would include the customer who wanted to buy items that hadn’t been lying out for “who knows how long” without being properly refrigerated etc.

You don’t want to go there again, fine. You want people to agree that you were totally in the right, that there was NOTHING about your actions that were at all questionable, that the store employees were TOTALLY in the wrong and refused to acknowledge it? well, you did get some people that agreed. You also got some people who tried to gently point out that what you were really complaining about was the store employee doing their job a little TOO efficiently.

15

As a retail employee-THANK YOU WRING!

Gosh, if I had a dime for every unattended cart/basket blocking the aisles tripping people up, I would be fucking rich.

16

(Note to self: After starting a thread, don’t bother to contribute any further posts, offering rebuttal, analogies to similar situations, further questions, and so on. It’s a waste of time because only the OP is read and replied to, and the respondents’ word is final say, not open to further discussion. Once I have been proven “wrong,” just shut up and take my beating.

Everything I learned when I worked in retail is wrong, wrong, wrong. The customer is not always right – we are! The customer is not the reason we have a job – but rather an imposition that should be made to go away so we can file our nails in peace. After all, that’s why employees get paid – to be smug and self-righteous. Never give anyone the benefit of the doubt – they’re all jerks! (Subnote to self: Check to see whether I accidentally posted to customerssuck.com by mistake.)

Also, remember that in public, it’s finders keepers, losers weepers. So:

Never take more than one garment into the little dressing room to try on. After all, if I go out into the main dressing-room area to use the 3-way mirror, the garments I leave in the small room may rightfully be considered to abandoned, since they’re unattended. Alternately, carry all extra garments around with me. Also be sure to carry coat, purse, and shoes along as well.

Never use coat-checks or coatracks in restaurants. If I’m not wearing it, into the lost and found it goes (if I’m lucky).

Always buy gas at stations where I can pay with my credit card at the pump. Waiting inside behind a long line of people buying cigarettes and lottery tickets could get my car reported as abandoned and towed.

In hotels, remove all personal property when I leave for the day and stash it in the car, even if I’m returning that evening. For all they know, I might be leaving town and not coming back!

Carry my coat, purse, and umbrella (in rainy weather) to the buffet or salad bar, like an old lady. Ditto the restroom. After all, someone else might want to use my table!

There is NO SUCH THING as being too efficient! So smile and say “thank you” when the hotel maid shows up at 6 am to clean my room, when the waitress refills my water glass while I’m still drinking out of it, and when the bus driver pulls away while I still have one foot on the ground. They’re just being extra efficient and I should be grateful!

Oh yes, and be considerate of retail employees. They hate to find things cluttering up the aisles for people to trip over – like carts, baskets, and customers. Must keep everything spic and span!)

OK, consider me lambasted! Bad customer! Bad! Bad! slap

Sheesh! I am SORRY I brought it up.

17

I’m sorry you feel lambasted, but I think your analogies are way off base. You need to look at what is more common -someone abandoning groceries near the checkout (which happens all the time), is not nearly in same ballpark as someone abandoning their car at a gas station pump. Also, it is a common practice to try on one outfit and leave the others in the dressing room while you use the mirror (not to mention that if someone did go in to clean the dressing room they would presumably see the clothes you wore into the store hanging there).

As for customer service, had you asked a clerk to serve you by watching your items, I’m sure they’d have been more than happy to. In the meantime, they had no idea they would be serving a customer by leaving the items lying around. To the contrary, they were serving customers by keeping the area tidy and safe.

18

slight hijack

Actually, if you posted this over at Customers Suck, they’d tear you a new one. Seriously. YOu wouldn’t come out of there alive…
I understand you’re upset, but come on! You should see some of the shit we put up with.

19

Note to self: unexpected last-minute supermarket detours shall henceforth be completed at the beginning of the shopping trip to avoid separation from previously selected grocery items.

For what it’s worth, Scarlett, I would’ve been mighty pissed off, too.

20

<b>Scarlett67 said:</b>

quote:

cool chic said:
Remember most of the time they only get paid minimum wage, with NO tips, so why should they babysitt/trip over your basket?!

Re “babysitting,” as you put it: So minimum-wage employees should not be expected to help customers, because they make too little? Is the level of customer service to be based on how much the employees make? It’s not my fault they agreed to work for low wages. Isn’t customer service part of any job that puts you in contact with the public? And we’re talking about keeping an eye on a basket of groceries for a few minutes, not painting my house. But I don’t want to bother the clerks with watching my stuff – just to be able to leave it unattended for a few minutes.

As for tripping over it, I didn’t leave it in the middle of the aisle. It was tucked up flat against the shelves, even under the upper part of the display. And the store was nearly empty. You would have had to try really hard to trip over it.

Cool Chic’s Response:

Yes, there are a few of us who have to work minimum wage. I was not fortunate enough to further my education and get a “good paying job”. I work at a grocery store part time while my two year old is at daycare and my husband is out working at a “good paying job”…but that’s my probem, not yours. I don’t think I have to put up with cranky customers…the quote “Customers are always right” went out the door long long ago. As for customer service…if you are cranky at me, I am not going to waste my smiles being nice to you. “Treat others how you wish to be treated”.

You wouldn’t believe the amount of customers that leave baskets in the most usual and usual spots while being bothered by line-ups. If someone were to say “I will be right back” ---- followed with a smile…no problem…I will be more than happy to hold your basket. Enough said.

<b>You have a really nice day!!!</b> :wink: