Why aren’t supermarkets designed so that frozen foods are the last section you pass through before checking out? And before that, produce and other items that need refrigeration? The way the stores are designed now, by the time I get to checkout, all my frozen food is defrosted, and my refrigerated food is warm… OR I have to zigzag across the store to shop in the right order.
Our local supermarkets allow Coke and Pepsi to take care of ordering and stocking the product. Okay. I don’t care who does it. But the local megamart decided to stop carrying 2L bottles of caffeine-free diet coke. (I counted: they went from 28 rows of regular coke and two of c-f diet coke, to 30 of regular coke; regular diet coke remained unchanged.) I wasn’t sure if they were just out of it or had stopped selling it, so I tried to ask.
The store claimed no knowledge of their inventory, but also no way to communicate with anyone who had such knowledge. Coke, apparently, is free to make such changes, with no oversight from anybody in the store, leaving no records behind.
Coca-Cola, however, claimed no knowledge of what goes on in any retail establishments, ever. They just follow orders from the store.
Clearly, they don’t want me buying that product. Fine; I’ll live. But why the charade? Why not just say “that doesn’t sell, so we’re not going to carry it anymore”?
You answered your own question. The store is laid out in a way that ensures you have to cover the whole store. They’re hoping you make a few impulse purchases as you’re doing all that zig-zagging back and forth. It’s one of the reasons that common items like milk and eggs are typically at the back of the store. Even if you’re running in for just a couple of things, they want you to cover as much of the store as possible.
No - they can not over ride over a certain dollar amount at the register. Past a certain amount the transaction needs to be transferred to customer service. Which is “push two buttons and walk the customer over to the service desk”.
[ul]
[li]As a cashier I can make adjustments up to a very small amount.[/li][li]A manager has the next level up of override. Not being a manager, I do not know the specific amount.[/li][li]Above that, it has to go to customer service.[/li][/ul]
Whether or not THAT is stupid I leave as an exercise for the reader.
It’s deliberate. They want you to zig-zag so you spend more time in the store and are more likely to make impulse buys.
Milk and eggs are at the back of the store so they can load them directly from the cooler. And the frozen food aisle is usually pretty close to the door the back area to reduce time spent at room temperature.
Strange, but okay. Thanks for answering!
Frankly, I don’t understand it either. Why would a shop have a policy like this?
If I was told this over the phone, I’d question it too. It seems so strange that I might well think the other person must be mistaken, or they had misunderstood the question, or were just too lazy to look up the price for me.
I keep parsing the thread title as ‘rectal stupidity’. Probably because I had another patient jam something so far up his behind that he perforated his colon again. Clean up, aisle 9!!
So, never mind.
And… that is my cue for mentioning the time someone left a very long turd on the bench in the men’s dressing room.
Honestly, people, we have THREE men’s toilets in the store, each supporting multiple seating arrangements, there’s just no excuse for that sort of rectal stupidity.
There is a reason we stock biohazard clean up supplies.
When I shop at Fred Meyer (local Portland chain acquired a few years ago by Kroger) it’s almost always because I’m out of quart bottles of heavy cream that I use for my coffee. It has to be the store brand because it’s in a bottle with a screw top lid not a carton and it’s really, really good. Darigold is everywhere and they’ve managed the feat of producing whipping cream that has absolutely no flavor or mouth feel–it’s some kind of malign miracle but that’s neither here nor there.
Anyway, for some bizarre reason, Freddie’s is so often out of that quart size that it’s starting to feel personal. I mean, the stuff has a shelf life that’s more like a half life, the sell by date is literally months so there’s just no reason not to stock the shit in. None. Sometimes I can corral an associate to go check the back and that’s about a 50/50 chance I get my item. There’s always plenty of pints, but buying those is a pain in the ass and also they’re $3.39 each instead of $4.99 for the quart so no, ain’t gonna do that because it’s annoying to force the cashier to change the price to $2.50 each (or actually $2.50 for one and $2.49 for the other to make the prices match for the quart) because I really prefer to use the self check because a lot of the cashiers are so slow I could be out of there twice by the time they finish their bovine processing of my items.
In a word, Freddie’s for my heavy cream is fraught. Last time though, took the fucking cake. They stock the stuff on these big rolling carts with slanty channels that the product will ostensibly slide down as each bottle is removed–but the quart bottles just don’t really do that. And this time, there were two stupid bottles at the very very back of the channel and I simply could not reach them. Usually I can stand on the edge of the door and just reach but these were just that extra infuriating inch too far. The whipping cream is ALWAYS on the highest shelf, of course. No associates in sight. So I said fuck this shit and headed into the back because that often winkles the associates into showing themselves because they’ll hide back there but a customer in the back is a big no no. Nobody showed up so I nipped round into the dairy case and discovered why the stocking problem–some fucking idiot had tightly packed five or six of those rolling carts full of perishable gobacks as hard against the whipping cream cart as it’s possible to get. Because the gods forbid they actually store this stuff out of the way so they can stock product for PEOPLE TO BUY. Something snapped in my head a bit at that point so I goddamned well moved enough carts to get up there, grab those two last bottles of cream and I left the carts all higgledy piggledy because although I’ve worked grocery before, it wasn’t THIS grocery and it AIN’T MY JOB. I had been shopping with the 9 year old grandchild and I think I kind of impressed him with my iron determination to leave the store with the items I came there to purchase, by the gods!
Also, they didn’t have my favorite salad AND Freddie’s hot deli selections totally blow chunks. If it wasn’t for the halfway decent produce and the goddamned heavy cream they could go fuck themselves. 
Former Dollar Tree Manager here. There are a few things lees than a dollar. Always fun having people want something for less than a dollar, because it is "near the sign for one of those(“near” meaning 2 shelves down, and 24 feet up the aisle. :rolleyes:)
That shouldn’t bother you. You’ve been asked you opinion about a product your store sells. If you have no opinion say so.
No you should not be assumed to know the price of every item in the store, but you should know how to find out. In some stores the cashier can scan a tag to determine a price without ringing it up. So it is reasonable a customer might expect you can do so. If you can’t do so, you should be able to direct the customer to one of the price check scanners many stores have. If your store has neither, you should be able to direct the customer to someone who can tell them. Certainly, if you’re not expected to know the price of everything in your store, the customer isn’t. I have often seen no prices marked on shelves for items because they’ve been moved away, or the prices have fallen off.
This is a perfectly reasonable question. Store shelves are often out of items when there is more suppply in the back. And if there’s no more in the back and it’s on sale, many stores will give you a rain check.
And then there are the cashiers who ask about your purchases:
Cashier, ringing up a jar of gefilte fish: Is this stuff any good?
Me: If you have to ask, then, no.
When I contrast this statement and the hopeful, positive attitude that it conveys with the other poster’s (primarily two of them) who work as cashiers and the obvious outlook that you have on your customers compared to the way they come across, it tells me volumes about both you and them.
My guess is they are going to be stuck bitching about the human scum they are forced to deal with for the rest of their working lives, while you sound like you are destined for bigger and better things ahead.
(someone who is outraged at a politely customer asking “Excuse me, how much does this item cost?” has NO business working retail)
That’s a kind post, but I have been in retail foods for 35 years. I am married to a wonderful woman and we live in our small home in the woods with our dogs and cat. Once a year we go on vacation, usually to a family cabin in the mountains of North Carolina. I do not believe there are bigger and better things than this.
I saw a woman scream at the cashier and blame him for putting the wrong phone number in to bring up their rewards number. Except she admitted she gave him the wrong number. “You should have known that isn’t my phone number!”
to be fair, I also saw a guy admit he put in the wrong phone number (I think he transposed 2 numbers). She had a meltdown because this meant she wasn’t racking up items on her card (it’s the buy six, get the seventh one free kind of promotion). Except not only were none of her three items part of that promotion, but none of them were on sale. I was two people behind her and as I paid and left she was the next lane over getting re-rung up by the manager under the correct number and still yelling.
I worked for Safeway for 12 years. When I was a checker one of the things that always pissed me off was the people who got in line and started checking out but were clearly not finished shopping yet. If you forgot one thing, fine, happens to everyone. OTOH if you bring up a half-full cart and are still giving instructions to your 8 family members you brought to pick up stuff from all over the store, fuck you, you’re still shopping, get the hell out of my line.
And when the store closes, WE ARE CLOSED. Don’t come knocking on the door at 2:00AM with your sob story about your baby needs diapers, that’s what 7-11 is for. The registers are turned off and the tills are all in the safe; I couldn’t sell you anything even if I wanted to, which I don’t. And don’t fucking walk in to the store at 11:55PM and then spend an hour slowly sauntering around the store like we just opened. My stockers WILL run you over with the power jack, they don’t give a shit. We close at midnight and you’ve got ten minutes; if you’re still in the store at 12:11AM, you’re spending the night with my stockers, you can leave at 6:00AM when they do.
Exactly. If the item rings up $19.99 and the customer says "They told me on the phone it was $14.99, you know you are dealing with a liar.
One woman bought some holiday items in November and tried to return them in July for a refund. “Well, the clerk told me I could do this.” Right, like I don’t know our 15 day return policy, and the fact that holiday items are non-returnable after January.
As I put it: People can say anything. That doesn’t make it the truth.
Oh, the stories we have on people not understanding the concept of closing time. I call it the 7-11 mentality: All stores should be open all the time.
My store has to close two hours before sundown for the Jewish Sabbath. That rule is never to be broken ever. One day I was working “last cash” (last register that takes cash payments) on Friday, and leaving when someone insisted they could find a way to shop for the party goods they needed for tomorrow’s brunch:
Me: The registers are closed.
Her: I could pay with my credit card
Me: I cannot accept a payment after the registers are closed.
Her: You could total it up, I could pay cash and you could ring it up on Sunday and put the money in the drawer then.
Me: Right, and lose my job.