If I ran the grocery store!

[zoid]

Enforce the damn 10 item line and bring back HP Curry sauce.

[RealityChuck]

@california_jobcase

I’d add a “cash only and we mean it” register. I know this board leans hard to the card-swiper side, but it just seem like every time I get behind a card user, it goes like this:

1. Wait for every item from a $150 order is rung up and bagged.
2. Cashier says the total price.
3. Customer goes digging in purse or wallet for card.

The same applies to cash customers. It’s rare to see someone have their wallet out before they are told the price for the entire order.

And then they decide they need to find the exact change from their change purse.

OTOH, most supermarkets have you insert your card before they finish.

[Hampshire]

From 4:45 to 5:45 Monday thru Friday you get a mad rush of people on their way home from work buying an armful of items for dinner.
So that would probably be a good time to have all 4 of your express lines staffed instead of just one with the line stretching down a food aisle.

[Inner_Stickler]

@Annie-Xmas

Okay. I know from experience if you tell a customer “We don’t carry that item,” some will go around asking other workers the same question.

That does suck and I try very hard not to be that customer. But when I am looking for something, it is because I want that thing. If the store doesn’t have it, I want to know so that I can stop wasting time and try another store.

[Annie-Xmas]

@RealityChuck

The same applies to cash customers. It’s rare to see someone have their wallet out before they are told the price for the entire order.

And then they decide they need to find the exact change from their change purse.

OTOH, most supermarkets have you insert your card before they finish.

The “exact change” people drive me bonkers. It’s $15.47, you give me a twenty and I have to wait for you to count out 47 cents?

Too many people don’t have their wallet out when you tell them the amount. They have to find it, then find their stack of 29 credit cards, then do the shuffle to find the card they want to use.

I would definitely ban the use of any hand held device at the register. If the cashiers cannot use them, why the customers? You’re trying to keep the line moving and they are ignoring you in favor of gabbing on the phone. Or you’re saying “Next on line,” and they are too busy texting to hear you.

I cannot say anything about that work, but I’ve really gotten some people angry when I’m on a store line and I say “They think we should wait while they conclude their gabbing. Their device is more important than real life.”

[Dinsdale]

@silenus

There are three Stater Brothers stores in my town. Each of them has a different layout. Stop that! Just keep the sodas in the aisle next to the condiments and we’ll get along fine.

Yeah - I have wondered what marketing genius decided that the folk who sho at the Jewel on the north side of my town, prefer a completely different arrangement than 2-3 miles further south along the same road.

Here’s my suggestion - put drugs and alcohol on one end or the other. Heck, put one on each end. But don’t put them smack dab in the middle of the grocery aisles.

I’ve worked here for over five years. I think I know what credit cards we take. And if I forget, there’s a sign on my register.

Not exactly the same, but our store allows you to charge groceries and get cashback over the purchase price. The maximum amount amount changed a couple of times recently. On repeated trips it did not appear that a single cashier had any idea what the max allowed was, or that the amount had changed. They would often give us information that directly contradicted the sign at the checkout line - which was also wrong. Store management was clueless as well. We made several calls to corporate to figure out what was happening, and after a couple of months it seemed to settle out.

[BwanaBob]

No checks allowed would be the mantra in my grocery store. Join the freaking 21st century. Also when I say 10 items or less I do not mean 11 or 12 or 20.

[Dung_Beetle]

@Annie-Xmas

The store I work at has a policy: Get people into the aisle. If a customer asks you where something is, don’t say “We don’t have it.” Say “If we have it, it would be in aisle 4.” The customer goes into aisle 4, doesn’t see the item, but sees other items they buy impulsively.

@Broomstick

Pretty much every grocery store has a policy like that.

Not Publix. If you ask a store employee for something, they’ll walk you right to it.
I actually have a great love for Publix and can’t think of much to complain about, except: They have an online ordering feature for their deli, and about half the time, I arrive to pick up my meat and find it’s not ready because nobody ever got the slip off the printer. And that’s probably because the printer isn’t in the deli area, but over in the ready-made food section. If that were my department, I’d have somebody checking that printer like their job depended on it.

[Grrr]

I would like grocery stores to come up with phone apps that help you with your grocery list.

When you make an entry to the list, the app tells you what isle it’s on.

[Grrr]

It’s worth noting that grocery stores intentionally put items typically bought together at opposite ends of the grocery store as it tends to drive up impulse buys.

[Ludovic]

I would get rid of the ethnic aisle: this is the 2010s, we’re pretty worldly in our eats nowadays. A lot of the time it’s hard to remember when something is in its logical place next to the other sauces or sodas or is in the ethnic aisle. Although I guess if it is something that doesn’t have an exact equivalent elsewhere in the store then I guess it can stay, but the only thing I can think of right now is tortillas, and if all the other “ethnic” foods are moved, it can then move in next to the breads.

[kayaker]

@Grrr

I would like grocery stores to come up with phone apps that help you with your grocery list.

When you make an entry to the list, the app tells you what isle it’s on.

You in the UK, then?

[kanicbird]

More cashiers and other ways to check out would be my preference. My policy would be that since a person is going to check out anyway, there is no need on the customer’s part to wait on line, the store just failed to manage this customer’s time correctly - we know he/she is going to check out, we just have to meet them when they are ready, and not have them wait till we are ready.

The other one I would like is a isle of speciality rotating items, things that are unique and good buys but one knows they will only be there a short time.

[Biotop]

@Grrr

It’s worth noting that grocery stores intentionally put items typically bought together at opposite ends of the grocery store as it tends to drive up impulse buys.

I have 30+ years in the grocery business and have never known this to be so. Just the opposite. If you want to sell a companion for product X, you put it close product X or else people walk out without the companion product.

[Broomstick]

@RealityChuck

OTOH, most supermarkets have you insert your card before they finish.

Sure, you *can *insert your card before the cashier finishes ringing you up…

… but what you’re not told is that the idjits who programmed the machines at our stores (and many others) assumed that once that payment card goes in you’re DONE. It wants to end the transaction RIGHT THERE. That interrupts the ringing-up process while the machine dithers in confusion (although it’s brief enough you, the customer, might not notice), can make it difficult or impossible for me to correct any scan errors for items or coupons, and may even end your transaction even as I am trying to ring up the next item (that happens about once or twice a month - VERY annoying). Oh, and last Christmas there was the software glitch where the software the store used to run it’s digital coupons/incentives would interact with gift card activation to lock up the entire system, that was fun… :rolleyes:

Yes, most of the time you can stick your card in and you’ll be fine. Once in awhile, though, all hell will break loose. If you want to be sure you minimize the chances of things going awry you’ll wait until the cashier gets all your items rung up, all your coupons in, and has fixed any problems before sticking the payment card in.

Now you know. Your choice.

My record was one guy who wound up with five receipts for a mere twelve items. This was a few years ago, some of the software problems are fixed now, but basically every time he stuck his bank card in the machine BOOM! end of transaction and a receipt spewing out of the slot. And, of course, this had to be my fault. I told him to wait to insert the card. By the third time around his daughter, who was with him, was telling him to wait. But no…! The machine was telling him “insert card” so he’d insert the card, why listen to human beings, especially why listen to the human being running the damn machine 40 hours a week? What could I possibly know? And the transaction would end. Rinse and repeat.

I guess MY wishes would be

1. Only people who have actually grocery shopped for a family permitted to program these machines

2. Anyone programming a register will be required to work 40 hours on the machine during rush times like Saturday afternoon, preferably the Saturday before Christmas, so they can grasp how customers ACTUALLY use (and abuse) the machines.

[Grrr]

@kayaker

You in the UK, then?

And my tweak to spell check would be to check for context.

[Broomstick]

@Dung_Beetle

Not Publix. If you ask a store employee for something, they’ll walk you right to it.

That’s not what Annie and I were talking about. We weren’t talking about directing to items we have, it’s items we DON’T have and DON’T carry. The store policy is not to admit the store doesn’t carry something, it’s to direct people to some other aisle in hopes that when they can’t find what they want (because the store doesn’t carry it) they’ll buy something else instead.

[Jackmannii]

If I ran my local supermarket I would:

1. Stop advertising specials as 3 (or 5) of an item for a special low price each, when buyers can get just 1 of the item for that same price, and

2. I’d stop sneaking an organic produce item into the general produce display in order to trick customers into buying the higher-priced organic stuff.

3. I’d be fired as manager for losing out on store income.

[Grrr]

@Biotop

I have 30+ years in the grocery business and have never known this to be so. Just the opposite. If you want to sell a companion for product X, you put it close product X or else people walk out without the companion product.

Well, this is coming from a piece I saw on 20/20 (one of those news show) with a marketing director for a big chain grocery store.

Just thinking off the top of my head at my local grocery store:

Cereal, milk
Bread, deli meats
Velveeta, Rotel…

All at opposite ends.

[Biotop]

@Annie-Xmas

There’s a simple reason for this: When a customer learns where things are, they go right to them. Most people buy the same things every time, and don’t go into aisles where things they don’t buy are located.

Every time the store “shuffles the deck” people go into other aisles and do more impulse buying.

The store I work at has a policy: Get people into the aisle. If a customer asks you where something is, don’t say “We don’t have it.” Say “If we have it, it would be in aisle 4.” The customer goes into aisle 4, doesn’t see the item, but sees other items they buy impulsively.

Again not my experience. If a customer asks me where Product X is located, we are trained to stop whatever we are doing and take the customer to Product X.

Every year 10% of the products are new in a grocery store. That means 10% of the products also leave as the store itself is not getting any bigger. Meanwhile, tastes change. Everyone hates the major product shifts, but it needs to be done every five years or so to adjust to these changes in products and consumer tastes. That stores move products so that customers have to search to find them and thereby see things they may have not seen before is a myth.