Thank you. I should have thought of that. Short and simple.
I was talking with my wife and she reminded me the Kroger near our old house didn’t have a center aisle. It wasn’t as deep a store. The aisles were maybe 60 or so feet long. It’s been years since we shopped there. We rarely go to that part of town since we moved.
This store we use now is much bigger. I wasn’t exaggerating about those 100 ft long aisles. They seem to extend forever. That’s probably why it had a center aisle. They had the room. Now they’ve decided more shelf space matters.
I’m happy as long as they don’t stick those cardboard shelves filled with promotional or sale merchandise in the aisle, thus reducing the aisle width to 1.25 carts.
The elderly and disabled have a few options. They can get assistance with shopping, they can use the motorized carts, or both.
I’m not without sympathy, but there are other options.
aceplace, the description of your Kroger store leads me to believe that you live in a suburb and the store is less than ten years old. Around here, the only ones with a center aisle are in the fancy pants suburbs. The stores in the city and towns further out tend to have the long aisles.
I am handicapped and if I met a couple of posters – well,you’d better watch your toes,'cause I’ll run them over with my electric wheelchair!
Wal~Mart will ship bulkier items (cat litter/toilet paper) free,if you buy $35.00 of stuff… Very easy to do. As I must ride a bus,there is a limit of how many bags I may carry.
Let me whack your knees with a hammer a few times,so you can see for yourself how wonderful those “options” are. I’m living “that” life. It ain’t fun.:mad:
My regular Jewel supermarket doesn’t have the cross-aisle openings. Another that I sometimes stop at if it’s on my route (just for one or 2 items) is larger and does have openings between some aisles. I also occasionally stop at 2 Mariano’s, but I’m not sure if either has any aisles with openings.
I endorse this pitting … er, this MPSIMS’ing. And I speak as one who for a number of years fit into the “disabled” category due to poor eyesight. I have never understood why the signs listing what is in each aisle have to be so damned small! Center aisles don’t entirely eliminate the problem if your visual impairment is extreme, but they at least help.
I use online shopping (available at two local stores*) for heavy items. It is wonderful to have someone else drag all the stuff up the stairs to my apartment. My knee and back both enjoy not dragging 14 pounds of kitty litter (* 2 or 3) up the stairs, not to mention laundry soap, cat food, soda…
Yeah, but we know the OP’s mom has family. You know, once when I went to visit my mother I found her outside in the snow wearing sneakers of all things while she split wood for kindling. I said “Mom, PPE notwithstanding, I hate to see you out here splitting wood like this, if you set the alarm earlier you could have had it done before I got here.” The difference is, I was joking and we both had a good laugh.
But it’s clearly a lie. They had a space with the aisle and shelving that had space for X number of things. They wanted MORE things so they took the aisle away. It is not as if they would have had to take stuff away (that was already there) unless they mived the aisle.
I actively avoid the one grocery store chain in my area that does the center aisle thing. I find it very disorienting and I keep forgetting where I’ve been, so my shopping trip takes longer…Which is exactly why they do center aisles. They’re not doing center aisles to make things quicker or easier, they do them to keep you in the store longer when you can’t recall if you’ve been down 3b when you’re coming back up 4a.
