Sorry for your stressful day, but thanks for reinforcing my point - the “PTB” often set policies that, from their point of view, make the process more efficient. And it probably would, if everyone operated in a vacuum and always did things the same way. What it really does, since in reality rarely do things go according to script, is gum up the works, piss off customers and aggravate the customer contact employees. Yep, that’s how one should run a business…
HEB in Texas does a combination of those and more prepared meal kits.
What I’d like to see would be a sort of “recipe of the week” scheme, whereby they’d have a relatively easy recipe, how to scale it up and down for families of different sizes, and then special extra vivid tags telling where to get the ingredients. And to cap it off, offer a discount if you bought something like 2/3 or 3/4 of the ingredients for a recipe. (I’d say all the ingredients, but I don’t want to screw someone because they already happened to have soy sauce in their pantry and don’t want to buy a new bottle, for example).
That way, you could encourage home cooking, bundle products together, and potentially drive sales of things you don’t sell a lot of, or that are high margin.
And for consumers, they’d get recipes that are vetted, have all the ingredients in-store, and that they know the nutritional information for. And hopefully that would be relatively cheap as well.
That’s a bit excessive and not enough people would feel embarrased. Rather, the register simply locks up so the cashier can’t ring up any more. “I’m sorry, sir, but that’s all you can have for the moment. Here, I’ve put the excess into a hand basket for you; if you still want them, you can go to the back of the line.”
Your ideas are intriguing to me and I would like to subscribe to your newsletter.
Maybe carts could be fitted w/ GPS or other sensors, to measure how close they are pushed to the sides of the aisle, how long they stay in one place, whether someone’s hand is touching them… Then at checkout, some discount could be offered to folk who DID NOT maneuver around the store like a complete idiot! 
THIS I like. But the real answer has to be that the store really doesn’t care that much about enforcing it, doesn’t it? Instead, they are just posting some limp statement, knowing full well that it will only affect responsible/courteous folk. The store doesn’t want to endanger taking assholes’ money.
Whenever I’m in the express lane and the person ahead of me has more than the allowed number of items, I tell the old joke “It’s been said that 20% of Americans can’t read or count. And they are all on the express lane at the supermarket.”
I’m had people confront me on this because “I only have two more items.” My response is “And 20% of all people think the rules don’t apply to them.”
The local HyVee tried this for awhile but must not have sold enough of them as I don’t see them in the store anymore.
This sounds like something the gummint would make them do. After all, a tall shelve could tip over or something could fall off and hit someone on the head, killing them.
On our last visit from the Township, they complained about the height of the shelves in the back of the store, where we stock our items. We can no longer use the top shelf, and were given two months to take them down.
I would like pull out step stools on the bottom shelf, so when the store can’t be arsed to face (pull everything forward) the upper shelves, I can still reach the item on the top shelf that I want. Without hunting down an employee, or inconveniencing a taller customer.
I also would like some type of computerized set up to tell me where an item can be found, and whether or not it is in stock.
Last night I spent 10 minutes looking for refrigerated prepared horseradish in the dairy case, where it has always been. I finally asked the meat guy, who asked the dairy guy, who said it was discontinued (wha??) and there is some on the shelf on Aisle X. I bought it, but I could have saved some time if I could have looked it up for myself.
And stop discontinuing selling things that I buy regularly, dammit!
That will not happen. If someone falls off the step stool, it would lead to a big lawsuit. All our step stools and ladders have big signs “For employees use ONLY”
Although I haven’t personally used it, the WalMart app has this capability. I don’t know how detailed it is, or how often it gets updated, but my daughter finds it useful.
H-E-B has that. My only complaint is that it orders the items in the counter-clockwise route of the store, and I like to come in the other door and work clockwise, so I have to do the list bottom-up and the interface isn’t great for that with lots of scrolling.
At my local grocer, if the item has an actual price tag on it (not an all-in-one label with the item name, price, barcode, source, etc., but a separate price tag), the chances are very very VERY good that the barcode either rings up the wrong price or won’t ring up anything at all (or there isn’t a barcode in the first place). This store only uses separate price tags if the item is somehow odd: clearance, special order, something they’re probably not supposed to be selling in the first place (such as the Starbucks syrups at the end of a special promotion), etc. Odd means you probably can’t ring it up.
Reading this thread just makes me think “Y’all need Wegmans or Publix.”