Do any of the US supermarkets offer an internet ordering service? Tesco do in the UK, and after watching my friend placing an order on the website, I decided to give it a go.
The way I look at things, I work in a shop, so I don’t want to spend my free time walking around one when I finish work. Other shoppers piss me off, I can never find what I need, and the entire process takes forever. And then, after all that, I get home to find that I’ve forgotten something I really needed.
Online grocery shopping is great. Pick what you want, pay on your card, then pick your delivery time. Delivery itself costs £5, but for the price of a weekly shop, that’s a drop in the ocean in my opinion. I’d happily pay twice that amount, simply because it preserves my sanity and takes the dread out of grocery shopping. And best of all - you don’t end up getting distracted by the “special offers”, and buying things you don’t really need. I spend less on my weekly shop now, and no longer have cupboards full of crap which I won’t use. Love it!
Ok, people bitching about this one pisses me off. They do that because they’re told to. Why are they told to? Because it’s easier on the customer to not get back a handful of change. Yeah, those lazy assholes, following store policy.
Totally agree on this one! Conversely, I can’t stand the people cruising the parking lot like they’re trying to get the pole for the Daytona 500. Hey you! Can’t you see I’m walking here! This especially bugs me when I’m shopping with my kids, am already in the crossing before these people EVER ENTER the parking lot, and they don’t slow down AT ALL. That’s when I wish I had a spike strip in my purse!
How about those folks who like to cause traffic jams while they hold a conference with people in the next car? ARGH!
And finally, I despise the etiquette contest. While walking or driving, you come to a crossing at the same time as someone else. Wanting to be polite, and not wanting any accident to occur, you yield by waving them ahead. Not to be outdone in the politeness department, they wave you across. You wave a second time, but they just sit there anyway waiting. Then, when you finally say, “OK fine, bucko, I can’t stay here for the rest of the day,” and make your move, they decide to take you up on your offer after all. JUST GO ACROSS WHEN I WAVE THE FIRST TIME, YOU DOINK! :mad:
Ever had one put a two-liter bottle of Coke in with your bread? I did! The bagger was probably new, but if he’d had the sense God gave a goose, he would have known better than that! :wally
At some of the Biggs stores here, they make you pay a quarter to get a cart, which is refunded when you return the cart to the cart corral. Works okay if you have a quarter handy. If you don’t, it’s a damn nuisance to have to go inside and get change in order to enjoy the privilege of using a cart.
Along the same lines, I can’t stand when grocery stores put the cart corrals miles apart from each other. I’ve got news for you, grocery people. If I have to walk more than five or six spaces to return my cart, I’m leaving it where I parked, dammit, especially in the pouring rain. Space them conveniently.
How about those kids who are selling candy “to keep kids off drugs”? I used to see them all the time. Once, I saw one in the middle of the afternoon, so I asked him, “Shouldn’t you be in school?” He just stared at me blankly. If a kid can’t tell me what organization they are selling for, they don’t have a chance with me.
kirk280980, they have internet grocery delivery around here, but they refuse to deliver to apartments! I don’t know what their problem is–my building even has an elevator. I’ve never run into that sort of discrimination before.
Well, I’m going to bitch about it again. IF that is true, then it is the stupidest excuse for a store policy I’ve ever heard. It is NOT a convenience to me to have them ask me if I have change. It is a horrid INconvenience–do they think that I’m not smart enough to know that if I give them a $20 bill for a 17.63 purchase that I'm going to get back some change? Apparently, I am too dumb to realize that I could just give them the change up front if I had it, or felt like digging through my purse for it (with an impatient baby in the cart). Talk about convenience--NOW I have customers behind me griping because I'm holding up the line to dig change out of my wallet. WOW--don't know if I can stand so much consideration from the policymakers! BTW--let me clarify that I'm not just referring here to being asked for a penny or two. I have been asked this when all they would have owed me was .29 or some such small figure. So you tell me what a CONVENIENCE it is to me to scrounge $.71 from the bottom of my purse and that it’s being done for MY benefit–sorry, I just don’t buy it. I worked in a fast food joint where we weren’t even allowed to use the “cash tendered” button to figure change (lightning tended to knock out the registers during storms, and then no one was able to figure change without the machine to tell them, so they made us learn that from the start!) and I was NEVER instructed that it was policy to ask the customer for the change. I guess they figured that we (the customers) were all smart enough to come up with the change if we so desired.
In a similar vein, I remember once that I had a small purchase that totalled $5.14 (it’s branded in my memory!). I had $3 in bills and the rest I wanted to pay in change–$1.25 in quarters, the rest in nickels, dimes, and a VERY few pennies. This bitch behind the register REFUSED FLATLY to accept the money in this form, saying that she wasn’t going to have all that change in HER register. I was furious, but because it was an important purchase, I wrote a check for it, then kept the appointment that I had. After said appointment, I went back to the store and asked the management if they had a policy that prohibited cashiers from accepting large amounts of change for a purchase. He said that they did NOT have such a policy, and after I explained what had occurred, he apologized, asked for the woman’s name, and promised it would never happen again. It saved them from losing a customer, that is for certain!
So, in other words, put a corral every six or seven spaces apart all over the parking lot? Then, of course, you’d be complaining about all the damn corrals taking up all the parking spaces. You’ve been pushing the cart around the frigging store for an hour. What difference is it going to make to take a few more minutes to put it back in the corral? Sorry for the slight rant, but some of these complaints are just ridiculous.
I got news for you. If you leave it where it can coast into my car, I may accidentally “bump” it into your car as you’re leaving. If you’re too far away for that, you will get a comment about how lazy you are.
I don’t car how far apart the cart returns are. You just came from the store, I’m sure you can return your cart there. If you can’t walk that far maybe you need a handicapped sticker.
Otherwise your laziness is likely to lead to a cart mark on someone else’s cars. I guess you don’t mind when your car gets hit?
Before my current stint with the US Government, I worked for Giant Food, one of the two major area supermarket chains (Safeway is the other). I was a courtesy clerk, in other words the guy who will load groceries into customers’ vehicles for them. The store I was at (#205) is separated into two parts, the pharmacy on one end of the shopping center and the groceries on the other with some shops and a restaurant in between. Which is why I was never particularly busy except on New Year’s Eve. Part of my duties was to round up stray carts and move the handbaskets from the registers to the holders at the door. This was 7 years ago; cart corrals have been added since then. And there’s also companies whose sole purpose to round up carts that were left blocks away from their home.
I don’t have too big a gripe with people who don’t put the carts back when they are MILES from a cart corral–but if you’re going to do this, place it where it won’t take up a parking space!! I have left some carts out before–so I wouldn’t have to walk too far away leaving my babies alone in the car–but I try to make sure that it is out of the way and not where it will take off rolling and smash into another car. Mostly, because of the fact that 1) I do have kids in the car and 2) I am pregnant, I try to park in the spots nearest the cart corrals so that leaving them out doesn’t become a problem.
Something else about carts in the parking lot–I realize that stores can’t always be responsible for a renegade cart that rolls into a car and damages it–but don’t tell me that they can absolve themselves of ALL responsibility, because sometime this damage is caused because the cart corrals are neglected and become overfull, allowing carts to spill out into the driving area. This IS the fault of the store and it always irritates me to have them claim total non-responsibility for ANY damage caused by their carts. Plus, it ticks me off when all the carts are in the lot, leaving few or none in the store for the shoppers!
Jeff Olson– I feel your pain… my first job was the same as yours, back in 1988, at Giant #63 in Vienna. And, coincidentally, store #205 is where I shop now.
This isn’t exactly a human-behavior-related supermarket gripe, but I hate those “bonus cards” that all the supermarkets have come out with, where in order to get the sale price on anything, you have to get a little card that they scan at the register. It’s not that much of a hassle, but what bothered me about it is that when they introduced these cards they talked about them as if they actually give you extra savings, when in reality the stores are just taking all the sales away and giving them back by means of this card, which I suppose they use to collect data on people’s shopping patterns. (I shudder to think of what must be in “my” file at the Giant!) :eek:
This isn’t exactly a grocery store annoyance, but when I was working retail, there’d be a lot of (in general) Little Old Ladies[sup]TM[/sup] that would write checks for an even amount, wanting the change back.
For example, the bill was $11.11, and they’d write a check for $20. I can understand wanting cash back, because I typically want cash. But damnit, write your check for an even amount back. Write the damn check for $21.11. It’s not that hard!! Do you really want all that change??
But then again, I hate all other people in the store at the same time as me.
Nope, every 13 to 20 spaces. Do the math. Version A: A corral at space 1, 14, 21 in Row A. No one has to walk farther then seven spaces. Version B: Row A has a corral at spaces 1 and 21 and Row B has one at spaces 14 and 34.
I repeat: Store Managers, if you want your customers to use the corrals, then space them conveniently. This is especially important to consumers who: a) have young kids in the car and don’t want to leave them unattended; and b) don’t want to get soaked/frozen to the bone while searching for a cart corral.
No, I don’t tell you it makes things easier for you. I tell you that at least in some stores, cashiers are told to do it. Don’t bitch at me because you don’t like the way the grocery store does things, I don’t make the rules.
Hey, malden, Angie & I currently shop at 205 until our car’s fixed, I was just in there yesterday after work. 205 is so convenient for public transportation. Otherwise we’d be going to 180 (“Giant” Giant at Bailey’s Crossroads).
As a former stockchick, I agree with this one. Very much. I have found ground beef, baby food, magazines, and a papaya that had to be identified from the label of a V-8 Splash (I didn’t know what a papaya looked like). You know what happens to that stuff? Thrown away. You know what that does? Raises prices. Folks, the store isn’t that big. You can make it back to the place where you found it.
Oh, and I also can’t stand the kids who go through the store yelling “I WANT I WANT I WANT.” You’re not gonna get, so shaddap already.
