Thanks for mentioning that. That was the one thing the OP missed that annoys me more than anything else about grocery shoppers.
With respect to the express lane, I don’t mind when someone goes over by an item or two, but if you’re bringing 23 items into the 12-or-less lane, you’ve gotta know you’re over.
OTOH, I wish more stores would restrict the express lanes to cash and credit/debit cards, specifically excluding checks because they take time for the customer to write (and most of the time they don’t even bring out their checkbook until after the total comes up), and take more time for the cashier to record ID and whatnot. IOW, checks turn an express lane into a slow-as-any-other lane.
Which reminds me: if you’re waiting behind someone in the checkout line, it’ll save you and everyone else some time if you have your card, wallet, or checkbook out when it’s your turn.
My peeves from the customer side - Safeway has started doing this for about a year, and I’m not even sure it’s legal or safe, much less convenient - they’ve started stocking all kinds of crap on the floors of the aisles. Some aisles are so crowded one cart can barely get through now, much less two passing each other. I suspect they might actually be creating a safety hazard due to fire codes requiring aisles to be free of stuff on the floor.
The change thing is a pain in the ass, too - I don’t mind taking my change and wallet and receipt and everything off to the side and squaring it all away, but there isn’t any place to do that! You just kind of have to grab it all up and push your cart full of stuff off to a nearby empty place somewhere, hoping you don’t drop something along the way. Could they make it any more clear that once they have your money, they don’t give the tiniest shit about Customer Service?
Can I add more before I read the rest of the thread? Please?
When you are completing your transaction, accept your handful of change, bills and 2.5’ of paper, and take two steps out of the way. This way, you won’t be standing in front of the goddamn ATM swipey thingy when I get up there. I have been forced to just stand there, doing nothing but holding up the line, because some biddy has to sort and re-sort the bills, the change, the 2.5’ of paper, meanwhile, the cashier has already run through my groceries and is standing there waiting for me to pay. Believe me, I’d be delighted to swipe my card and get the fuck outta there, and if I could just get to the damn thing, I’d have done it already. I don’t care if you need to re-pack your purse before stepping outside the store. I share that need. But I don’t stand in front of the fucking card swipey thing, still in the line, while I do it. I walk to the next unmanned register where I am out of the way and* not* standing in anyone’s path. Then I re-pack my purse, count my change, scrutinze my 2.5’ of paper for typos, douche my vag, and then I’m on my way.
:: huff puff ::
And speaking of not blocking others, oh Masters of the Universe, don’t walk inside the store and then stop. Right in front of the door. I know this will come as a surprise to some of you, but there are other people who are also trying to walk inside the store. You are blocking everyone and creating a pile up right in front of the door. That goes double for your cart/buggy/whatever you call it. Stand to the right, walk to the left. Do not park your buggy right in the center of the aisle, while you stare, slack-jawed and overwhelmed at the hundreds of yogurt flavors available to you. And this goes triple for anyone who sees a long lost friend and stops – in the middle of the damn aisle – to have a nice chat. Pull your buggy the fuck out of everyone else’s way and try to find a nice spot to chat. I like the socks section of the cosmetics aisle. Who the fuck buys socks at the grocery store? You’re probably not blocking anyone there. But if you see someone hovering around two feet behind you, you might want to, you know, step the fuck out of the way.
I shop at a store that does not have baggers. It’s actually great for me because I can use as many or as few items as I want.
My ‘other side of the register’ complaint is that when I ask for 12 bags, you give them to me right away so I can be bagging while you check out the rest. When you don’t give them to me right away, I will not be done bagging before then next person needs to start. You will then give me the stinkeye for not being done.
And while we are at it, when I ask for and pay for 12 bags, please actually give me 12 bags. I am consistently shorted one and guess what: I actually needed 12 bags.
To the OP, brilliant rant. I’ve seen most of these things happen and it’s time these idiots realised how much time and money they are wasting.
I am surprised that you didn’t mention mobile phones. Maybe this isn’t a nuisance where you work, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it is.
An example from a couple of weeks ago. I was waiting in line for the checkout, the express one for less than 10 items. The person in front of me was having a conversation on her cell phone. It was a chat, not anything urgent… what she did last night, what they were having for dinner etc. etc. I could hear every word of one side of the conversation.
Her turn at the front of the queue. She puts her two items on the counter and continues the conversation. The guy does the bleep bleep thing with the items over the laser beam. He then looks up at the woman and tells her how much she owes. She pauses, then goes into the phone-wedged-between-neck-and-shoulder position while she searches for her money in her purse and dumps a handful of coins on the counter. The guy picks through the money and finishes the transaction. He hands her the receipt then bags the two items for her, after which she scoops up the remaining coins she had dumped on the counter, picks up the bag and leaves. No “thank-you” or “have a nice day”, just carries on with the phone chat.
The guy I’m sure was just trying to deal with that customer as quickly as possible because there was a queue, when I’m sure what he was wanting to do was shred her phone. When I handed over my three items, and the correct money, and said “thank-you” he smiled as if to say, maybe some people realise I’m a human being and not a robot.
When you’re waiting in the queue, make yourself useful, find your money before you get to the front. AND TAKE A MOMENT TO SAY THANKS.
Further, if they aren’t in the corral then they are either blocking the road, pedestrian pathway or a parking space. Stray carts are a pet peeve^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^Hpsychotic hatred of mine.
Also. at Winco and other warehouse groceries I imagine, the corrals have an entry and an exit (blocked with a gate) to facilitate cart collection. Don’t open the gate to shove your cart in backwards. Take the extra fifteen seconds to walk it to the other end and put it in properly.
I think that all aisles should be at least two cart-widths wide, all along the aisle. Now, if the store is open 24 hours, yeah, they have to restock while the store is open, but most restocking should be done during the graveyard shift, not between 2 and 8 PM, which is when the store is the most crowded. And those display kiosks that someone mentioned should not be allowed, if they inhibit the free and easy movement of carts along the aisles.
I am going to put my change and my debit card back in my purse AT the check writing stand, because if I move two steps, I’ll probably drop something. It’s gonna take me anywhere from one to four seconds. Sorry, but there IS no other place to do this easily that is within a couple of steps. And if I discover that the cashier has shorted me on something, then if I’ve moved away from where I received my change, then my likelihood of getting the problem resolved just went down drastically. Same goes for any money transaction, I really do need to count my money AT the teller’s window, or I’m SOL if there’s a problem. Now, I don’t have to sort my bills by amount and then by serial number, I just have to make sure that I’ve got the right amount and I have to get the money and my card into my wallet. I apologize if this does hold up the line, but I have to watch out for my money, because it’s for damn sure that nobody else will.
A note about stolen grocery carts. My supermarket has these security brakes on the carts. There is some sort of electronic device implanted around the perimeter of the parking lot. The second the front wheels of your cart pass over this electronic barrier, a metal brake releases, locking down the wheels and making it completely impossible for you to continue pushing the cart. Apparently, the employees have some magical key to unlock this braking device so they can retrieve their carts. If you’ve crossed the invisible cart barrier, you will be unable to push the cart back to the corral or back to the store. You just about have to carry it.
I’m coming around on this if you are disabled in any way, have balance issues, or have a cart full of children, a purse, another cart full of groceries, etc. The cashiers don’t really make this any easier on anyone. I start stressing when my groceries are being checked through and shoved to the bagging end of the checkout while the previous customer is still standing there, sorting out their shit. Because you’re paying attention to your money and not to my groceries (and understandably so), you may not notice if you pick up the bag containing my $15 Bed Head shampoo and walk off with it. So I do wish the cashiers would give like a 10-15-second lead time between customers. The previous customer is obviously not finished yet. Now we’re talking about mixing up two different customers’ orders and causing undue stress on everyone.
How’s that Lynn? We give everyone 15 seconds in between transactions. That’s your margin of error within which you can stand there and re-pack your purse. After that, you better get movin’ or my cart might “accidentally” clip your ankles. Sorry, but there are busy people behind me too.
Oh, speaking of which. If you are retired or a SAHM or are not generally gainfully employed between the hours of 9 a.m. and 5 p.m., please refrain from shopping between 11:30 a.m. and 1:30 p.m. That is lunch hour and most of us only have an hour or less to get food and get back to work. If you have nothing else to do all day, why pick the peak shopping hours to go browse the aisles? I’d think that first thing in the morning would be optimal, with minimal lines and not-as-busy employees. It never fails to infuriate me when I stop in to grab a sandwich or some sushi or something really quick from the grocery store, but there’s a bunch of retirees and SAHMs just toddling along, taking their sweet time about everything, not a care in the world. Hey! You’re not on the clock! Some of us are. I have a whole hour. I should be able to get in, order from the deli, collect my lunch, pay and get out within 45 minutes. But not if I’ve got to stand in line behind a bunch of retirees quibbling over $0.05, hunting for their coupons, arguing over the BOGO specials…
When I was a manager, I used to have a running agenda item on all staff meeting agendas called Basic Consideration Skills. This should be a required course from K–12 and the basic message would be: You are not the only person on the planet. Sharing is caring. Consider how your own douchebaggery effects others.
Same here, but better yet, the change machine is at the end of the counter, so to be able to collect your change you need to move out of the way of the next customer.
I’m not getting the issue with the change/bills/receipt. Aren’t you going to go straight home after shopping to get your frozen stuff put away? Then why not just dump the whole mess into one of the bags and sort it out in the privacy of your kitchen?
I mean, I get that not everyone lives in jeans like I do and can just stuff it all in a pocket to sort out later, but I don’t understand why it’s necessary to sort it out before going to the car.
At my friendly neighborhood Price Chopper that means the would-be cart thieves just leave them abandoned and immovable around the edge of the lot, which can make it interesting while you’re trying to pull into the lot without clipping one.
Also, even if the parking spot next to your car doesn’t currently have a car parked in it, that doesn’t mean that it’s fine to leave your cart there. Put it in the goddamn corral already; the twenty steps there and back won’t kill you.
I am, in fact, disabled, and I have balance issues on top of my disability. However, 15 seconds is about 12 seconds more than I will usually need to get everything put away. I figure that I’m going to need to clean out my purse every week or so anyway, so I do that AT HOME, where I can file receipts and iron my dollar bills and use a Sharpie to mark out “In God We Trust” and stamp every bill with an owl. OK, I don’t stamp every bill with an owl. So all I do at the register is check my change (if any), put my change or card away and the receipt away, and then move on. I do check to make sure that all the bags I take are actually MY bags, with everything that I’ve paid for and nothing that I haven’t. Since I need that cart to lean on while I walk out, I make sure that my bags are loaded into the cart that I used to shop with.
I do happen to refrain from shopping between about 10 AM and 2 PM. Now, a small part of this is consideration for other people. I must confess that the main reason is because I don’t LIKE to shop in crowds, and that’s when stores are most crowded, both with people who work 9-5 and with people who don’t work those hours. If I’m shopping at lunchtime, it’s because I can’t avoid it. Same goes for shopping on the day before a holiday. There are just way too many people out there who need a good slap upside the head, and once I got started, I just wouldn’t be able to stop.
If douchebags were able to consider how their actions affected others, chances are they wouldn’t be douchebags.
To expand — or perhaps riff — on this (which, oddly enough, I’ve noticed more at the store where several of us speculate the OP works):
I don’t have anything against large families. I grew up in one and loved it. But no matter how well behaved your children are (and MHO, at this particular store they tend to be surprisingly well behaved), the effect of six or eight is somewhat like plaque in an artery. This store’s aisles are wider than usual, but no matter: the volume of family expands to fill the available space. So please delegate the shopping to one parent and leave the young un’s with the other.
From my selfish POV (specific to bag-it-yourself stores), one thing I would like to see is a reusable bag that stays open. Or perhaps some sort of rack that will keep it open. It’s annoying to try to fill a bag that constantly snaps its mouth shut like a one-year-old faced with strained peas, especially when the line is stacking up behind you.
OdF (the dumpy bald guy with glasses who usually hits the store early Sunday morning)
