This one really steams me. They're advertising something as a special, so you think they'd stock up. But no, you get to the store and they're all gone. This happens routinely at my local Acme. Sure you can get rain checks, but what if it's a staple and you need it now? Or you just don't feeling like making a special trip back just for the one item?
Three Standard Store Practices that Seriously Rock My World (And I Don't Mean in a Good Way)
Photo: Molly Pop
I understand we all need to make a buck. I also understand that the folks in charge need to make decisions about things such as price hikes and product locations according to whatever their marketing and sales gurus are telling them. But three standard events that occur at basically every grocery store on a semi-regular basis throw me for a loop every time.
Drastically upping the price on a traditional cheapie.
This upsets me the most when there isn't any major crisis affecting a particular type of crop. An example of this would be if a particular store notices that many of us are stocking up on cornmeal and they jack up the price. Yes it's basic business, but for those of us who operate our household budgets with extreme precision, we may decide not to purchase that item from you at all when the store across the street still sells it at a reasonable price. Oh, and that impulse buy iced tea we would have picked up at your check out line? The guy next door gets to ring up that sale too. I guess my overall point here is that there are plenty of other high margin items in any grocery store that a fair number of us buy as well. Do you really have to play hard ball with the basic pantry staples when there's absolutely no price fluctuation on the back end for you?
Moving something critical to a new location and making it incredibly difficult to spot.
I'm busy, damn it. And I'm quite certain I'm not alone on this issue. Even those folks who have the shopping, menu planning and general home economics gig as their primary and only job are at least as busy as the average executive. Add in a few children, a career and a pet or two and we are seriously pressed for time. If you think running a home like clockwork is a joke, try it for a week. And don't think you're going to be laying down the law like a drill sergeant on 'roids, Skippy. We have to accommodate everyone else's changing schedules, mood swings, illnesses and picky eating requests, so you will too. For the sake of argument, we'll assume you're already completely familiar with the layout of every store a serious home economist has to hit in order to get the best value on every item for their family.
Let's also assume that you haven't already had to face the aggravation of searching out the most affordable, sustainable, eco friendly product of that type that also has semi-reasonable packaging standards. You're just a person who knows what they need and is running in to the store to get it after having juggled only one crying child (with no food allergies) and has only one phone call to answer and nobody at home waiting for medicine. We want to make it easy for you to imagine. Forget that most of us are in there juggling five times that much stress on any given day.
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Since laundry soap is the product I had to deal with most recently, I'll use that one as the example. If you think I'm exaggerating on my anger here, just ask our own Will Chen who happened to have the logistical pleasure of being on the phone with me when I discovered the soap was nowhere to be found. He got to experience my moment of frustration (cough, nuclear chick meltdown) first hand. Eventually, I found the soap. No thanks to the geniuses that reorganized the laundry aisle mind you, but I found it. My overall point here is that very few of us have so much extra time to burn that we'll be happy to spend it hunting down a basic item that's been in the same place for nearly a year. Grocery shopping is a colossal pain in the neck on the best of days. So could the powers that be please take that into consideration when they are taking an item from a particular aisle and moving it down to an end cap at the other end of the store? We have no way of knowing that you haven't pulled item number three on us.
Stop carrying a particular staple altogether.
This is the worst, particularly when it's something you depend on to run your household smoothly. Shelf stable half and half when you live remotely for example, or frozen grapefruit juice concentrate with no high fructose corn syrup. Those of us who play a major stewardship role in our homes put a great deal of thought into where we shop and what we buy at a particular location. If you got us in the door with a popular affordable item and we find your prices on a couple of other staples affordable, you'll find we're stopping by once or twice a month. Take the one critical item off the shelves however, and we're likely to pick up those other staples somewhere else. That's assuming we even live somewhere that allows us alternative shopping locations. Many of us don't. In that case, we're reduced to mail ordering certain items and taking a few things off of our local shopping list to make the twenty-five dollar cut off for free shipping. Those additional items account for revenue that would otherwise have gone into your cash register.
I realize this little home economics rant will likely do little to change the overall flow of things. But I am curious . . . do these things drive anyone else as crazy as they drive me? Do you have particular items that your budget depends on, such as ten pound bags of chicken legs or a particular brand of bar soap? Sound off below! (For another tale of shopping frustration, check out this article by Linsey.)
Best of Wise Bread
That is horrible if someone in a place controls a product's price for profit. But this kind of profit-making businness won't stand firm against a chain store because a chain store keeps supplying products once they run out.
Everything I love, they stop carrying. Or stop making at all. Shelf-stable Welch's juice concentrate - I used to buy 3 flavors, these days only one store has it and only apple juice. Parmalat shelf-stable milk (well, okay, the whole company nearly went under, so I understand that). Non-chlorine powedered bleach - apparently we shall all now use Oxyclean because the much cheaper brand I like (which was sold in cardboard boxes) has disappeared.
CLOTHESPINS. We bought our house, I got a longer laundry line, I needed clothespins. Who stopped carrying clothespins in favor of pink plastic lingerie hanging flowers and plastic organizer tubs? Target. Yep, they upscaled themselves right out of a basic need. I finally found some clothespins at our hardware store after going through a packet of cheapies from the dollar store in one summer.
Glad to know I'm not alone. I'll tell you what I'm finding out at our new locations: Canning jars (and the rings that go with them) are apparently a seasonal item. This is a real pain for me, as several of my jar tops got washed away with the flood. If some don't turn up soon, I'll have to just go ahead and mail order them. Who would have thought that something so basic like canning jar rings (and clothespins - geeze) would get taken off the shelves?
The sale items being out steams me too. I find it bordering on fraudulent. Especially since I often show up right at the opening of the doors to make sure I can stock up. Then they have like one of the item and have the nerve to act surprised that there's a line of 3-5 early bird shoppers getting ready to go nuclear. What gives with that, seriously?
I encountered the same problem last summer with finding medium sized lids. Luckily I ran into some lids in November at a local store that they had marked down to 89 cents a box. I bought all of them so I wouldn't run into the same problem this canning season. Sadly, 89 cents is what they used to cost when they weren't on sale. Oh well.. Happy canning!
The one that fries me the most is the moving of items. I assume "they" are doing it just so I have to look at more products and maybe buy more. Nope. My shopping is basic. And given the quality (read: contents and origin), there isn't much in a grocery store (or a Target) that I want. I know what I want and I am after it. Making me look for it just annoys me no end (I hoped to make that sound somewhat civilized. That is not how I really feel).
I saw your comment, and just had to insert what happened to me here....I went into our local "Big Box" store whilst on my lunch hour because they had my brand of detergent on sale. Where did I find them? NOT soap aisle, etc, oh no...for some reason the Powers-That-Be had moved them to the dairy aisle....my entire lunch hour was toast. But we live in a rural area and have no choice but to use that store.
So glad to find out I'm not the only one frustrated with grocery shopping. Before moving I had an excellent choice of several LARGE stores that carried everything. One would get any items you asked for. Now it's a 30 mile trip to 2 small stores that pull off every one of these complaints. To complain is useless. They are in business to make money, not for our convenience.
I've never much had a problem with price hikes. If something is too expensive for my budget, i simply don't buy it. Never have I come across a large price change in a staple food.
As for item relocation, now THAT is something I can relate to.
Our local grocery perplexed me for the longest time over shredded parmesan cheese:
-- Cheeses section? Nope. Blocks of cheddar, slices of swiss.
-- Gourmet cheese stand? Mostly expensive import stuff, no bottled parmesan.
-- Hrm... Pasta aisle? Nope. Nothing anywhere close.
-- Milk? Dairy? Nope.
-- I GIVE UP! Store clerk, help me! ... The lunch meat section? Between hotdogs and balogna. Really? Wow.
I've had that problem with the canned grated Parmesan before too. It's ALWAYS somewhere bizarre. Another thing that's always somewhere weird is prepared horseradish. I don't get it.
I bet the reason parmesan in a bottle is always somewhere weird is because the idea of cheese that comes in a bottle is weird! ;-)
I'd rather eat actual parmesan that bears more resemblance to cheese. Ok, it ain't cheap, but a little goes a long way.
Advertising a special on something perishable and everything in stock expires within 2 days! I am single. I don't buy any perishable with less that a week to 10 days before expiration! This is the primary reason I have stopped shopping at my local grocery store and (God help me) started shopping at the WalMart Supercenter. Sorry - I really do hate myself, but I can get a dozen eggs that will not expire for 3 weeks!
I do most of our shopping at our local Safeway because they're convenient, fairly reasonable, and tend to have better quality produce but I absolutely hate the fact that they seem to need to reorganize the store each year.
This last reorg had something to do with the shelves. They were upgrading to sturdier shelving for the aisles and managed to squeeze in a couple more rows making the aisles barely wide enough for two shopping carts to pass. And when they set everything up again, most products changed places; I often find things now on the opposite end and side of the aisle, but I end up wasting time looking for it. I still think they do it just to get us to "see" products we normally don't spend time looking at.
It's been long enough since the reorg that I've almost fully memorized the new locations... but I don't think I'll ever quite get used to finding the Boboli pizza crust on the feminine hygenie products aisle. Whose bright idea was that?!
Boboli in the tampon aisle . . . LOVE IT!!! That's a new one. I suspect it has something to do with significant others being sent to pick up emergency hygiene products and knowing they'll need to jump in and cook dinner on the fly.
My husband used to wonder why the diapers were next to the beer until he heard about stores having researched the trend of new moms sending their husbands out to buy diapers and snagging beer while they were there. That still doesn't answer some of the other really bizarre stuff you see "them" do with product placement. Seriously, what are they thinking some times?
I hope we're all going to give printouts of this thread to the managers of our soon-to-be-ex-favorite stores. And our favorite ones...
If a store stops selling a product, it's because people aren't buying it. There's no point complaining. You can buy anything that's still being manufactured online and get it delivered right to your door with no hassle. If an item is hard to find I'd try that!
Last time I was at the Winco bulk bins, there was no "whole wheat bread flour", for the first time in 2 years. They had "whole wheat four" and "whole wheat flour (unbleached)" Excuse me, but isn't all whole wheat flour unbleached? So I had to stand there for like 5 minutes, squinting at the protein content of each on the little tag, in order to make an educated guess about which one was actually the whole wheat bread flour! At least the one I bought worked fine in my bread, so I guess I made the right choice.
That may or may not be true. One of the big grocery stores near our house started doing SERIOUS demographic research and SKU traffic and added a lot of things (a bigger bulk aisle, an ethnic aisle with little minisections for Scandinavian, Polish, East African, East Asian, and Japanese food, and probably a bunch of stuff I never saw). They dropped a lot of the long-shelf-stable foods.
After a few months, they brought them back - either people complained, or the store looked farther back and saw that people bought those less often but in large numbers, or the recession changed their sale patterns a little.
The changing market actually seems to do that a lot - Target brought back clothespins a few years later, I noticed (but they already lost my presence in their laundry supply aisle). When everyone has a job and a lot of money prepared goods and higher-end goods sell really well and then there's a slump and people buy more mac n' cheese, or whatever. Supply managers have to be quick to keep up.
I've looked everywhere for alcohol thermometers (they use alcohol now instead of mercury). I know I can get them at a science supply company, but you pay top dollar there... All I want is the stereotypical 'stick-shaped' thermometers with the red bulb at the end. All they have these days is digital... Frustrating.
The grocery store where I shop seems to have issues with their organic food. They have an organic section, but more likely than not the organic product you're looking for is with the regular products. (For instance, you won't find organic oatmeal in the organic section, you'll find it with the rest of the oatmeal). The products seem to keep moving.
This is an issue for me as I mainly buy organic when it goes on special (tight budget and all). So the food I want can either be in the organic section, in the regular section, or in one of the end-of-aisle displays where sale items go.
I think they do this on purpose so we'll either buy impulse items while I'm hunting, or we'll give up and buy the regular priced, non-organic products instead.
I had the same experience in one grocery trying to find the jar of shredded Parmeson cheese. Got tired of trying to find someone to ask and gave up at one store. At another store, I scoured the aisles for peanut butter and jam. A clerk told me they now stock it on the bread aisle. The one aisle I did not visit before because I make my own bread. I wish stores has some kind of computerized kiosk that one could search for an item to tell you what aisle it is on. Now that we are living in the information age. It would kind of like looking up a library book. Kathy
I work at a b ig bo x st ore and
i'm frustrated just trying to put away misplaced items. They seem to change the shelves around about every two weeks, unless they run low on something or have too much... The floor plan changes to make shoppers see things they might not have noticed on the last visit. A lot of items people ask for are "seasonal," office items for instance, that we only carry during back to school, or men's handkerchiefs we only have during the Christmas season. All to maximize profit, of course. Fill out the comment cards, some companies READ them. They post them at our store.
Thanks for all the commentary, everyone. It's interesting to see some repeat patterns to what I'm seeing as well as some things I hadn't noticed at all. I have had the disappearing peanut butter thing happen before. In fact, I finally tracked down the butcher who was the only person available at that time and specifically asked where I would be if I were peanut butter. He had to make several calls, but seriously, I'd looked for another person to help me. Hopefully if they start being incovenienced enough by their relocations they'll buy a clue. I'm wondering if keeping the managers of the various stores I shop at regularly on speed dial to let them know when I can't find either an item or a sales person if that might make a difference. I've always avoided being the chronic regional complainer, but I am so seriously FED UP!!!! Glad I'm not alone.
The management people that put these changes into place, are generally not the people who work there, that you are inconveniencing. Those people will just get yelled at or worse for not completing their jobs on time. Their managers won't care that they were sent running by you to help you find things.
Great post.
I like #5's comment (didn't leave name) above who said:
"They are in business to make money, not for our convenience."
This is so true. Grocery stores purposefully move items around in order to get us to spend more. Studies have actually shown that the more time we spend in the supermarket the more we buy.
They are hoping that as we search for our favorite item we'll pick up an impulse purchase. In fact, nearly 40-50% of all our purchases at supermarkets are impulse buys.
If you've actually been in a supermarket late at night you'll notice that the shelves actually have wheels on the bottom which makes it extremely easy to move around. This shocked me when I actually saw it take place.
Whenever I find they've moved my favorite item I quickly look for the nearest stock clerk, manager, or cashier to help me find it. I figure its better to waste their time than my precious time searching up and down aisles.
Out of stock items are another one of my pet peeves. But I've learned instead of getting mad I just go tot the customer service desk and get a rain check.
It doesn't take that much time and the key is to keep your raincheck until you run across a manufacturers coupon for the same item. Then use both at the same time to save big.
I like the idea of saving the rain check until a coupon comes up to sort of "get even" for your aggravation. Of course, on staples those coupons don't come up as often, but I have seen them for things like Gold Medal flour before.
I go to BJ's about every two months and have a list that I stick to faithfully because you spend way too much at these places if you aren't careful. Every time I go, something on my list has been discontinued. It drives me insane. Does Costco do that? I write to them when it happens and if they write back, it's a bland and uninformative non-answer.
The big thing that got me was when one of the warehouse clubs in Arizona stopped carrying powdered milk in bulk. At the time, it was a critical to the savings strategies I was implementing, as well as being an item I liked to use for homemade bread mixes.
How much are they actually in control of their own suppliers? I always assumed stuff at Costco was like the specials at Aldi - "hey look we bought a warehouse full of these for 15 cents apiece!"
Every time I start liking something from Costco it disappears. Like the industrial sized cans of sauerkraut, which used to be a staple around here.
Oh well, my kid's almost done with diapers. I think our next Costco trip will be our last.
The owner of a discount grocery store in the town we shop in (about 50 miles from where we live, daughter works there) is also the owner of the only regular priced store in town. We have seen a situation that irritates us to no end. Even though the discount store has its own generic label, we have found that the prices at both stores are beginning to match. Another thing that we have found is some items that are popular amongst us frugal people (Borax, washing soda, fels naptha soap, Ivory soap, etc.) are no longer being sold at the discount store. When I approached the checkout clerk about not having washing soda and fels naptha and when would they have it in stock again, I was informed that they have never had the items in stock. Which I found interesting since I have purchased them for over a year at that store. And she has been a long term employee.
When I had the opportunity to go to the other regular priced store, I found that they had those particular items in stock and that the mark up was between $1.00-$1.29. Unless we want to travel the opposite direction from where we live to another store (26 miles away) with less selection we are at the mercy of this family of store owners.
some people commenting are angry that "They are in business to make money, not for our convenience"? Isn't that pretty much why anybody goes into business - to make money? It just seems to me that expecting other people to take huge risks and work their tails off (as most business owners do) for your convenience is pretty unrealistic. Unless you think we'd have better grocery selections if the government or some non-profit took over the industry?
I'm not angry that they're making money at all. I just don't like being let down by a place I give my consistent business. There will always be the crowd that buys the more expensive item, no matter how often they are canned / bagged / whatever at the same facility as the bargain brands using the same crop. So I really don't see why it would kill them to keep carrying washing soda, a product I've also not been able to find in this area by the way.
The thing that reallly makes me mad is when my local grocery store tries to sell me produce that has gone (or is on the brink of going) bad. The strawberries look all bright red and juicy (and on sale, 2 for 1! what a deal!) until you look closer you notice the ones on the bottom are brown. I have seen actual mold on berries and I've picked up asparagus that reeked like cat urine. I've unwittingly brought home produce that was promptly inedible the next day. My complaints to the store manager have been met with sympathy but no change - except my willingness to shop there. I won't give the store name away - let's just say it's a major chain in the southeast that rhymes with "Paris Cheater".
My local Fred Meyer store plays the price change game all too often. They either don't take the sale sign down from the previous week or they put them up too soon. So you're thinking "yeah, I'll stock up on tortilla chips because they're only $2!" And then at the checkout they ring up as $4.50. I watch them like a hawk! Grrr! ;)
That's a real drag, Powered by Tofu. Especially if you live in an area where there's no other choice. Grr . . .
We live close to three grocery stores. I am so grateful there's competition. One is a "big" chain that boasts about good prices but rarely has them. Their benefit is they stock a wide variety of brands. (I generally don't shop there.) Another is a family run chain that has great meat and sometimes produce sales. The third is the wild card, a bump and dent family owned small chain place. The regular guys dare not go horribly out of line because the last one would get the business and it IS customer oriented. Similar (rarely the same) stuff is always in the same place except for the oddball aisle (sort of like treasure hunt) that has small amounts of many items. Since I buy for the pantry not having the same exact items every week works.
I think you're onto something there, Olivia. Competition is definitely key to keeping some of these stores in line. Don't get me wrong, there are definitely great things about larger store chains, and most of them come out about even on the grievances scale. There are a few that have stood out over the years, but overall, they generally do the same aggravating things but balance it out with the occasional great loss leader so I keep plugging along. It's just hard sometimes, you know?
Item placement in grocery stores, believe it or not, just happened to be a topic I discussed while visiting my parents and my mom's brother (among others) this weekend. Apparently my uncle was trying to locate frozen hush puppies (perhaps it was a new item and he had a coupon?) and thought that it would be with frozen bread; instead it was with frozen veggies (hush puppies are made of cornbread so they got placed with corn instead of bread!). There are a few items that I find hard to find -- such as pancake syrup and have discovered that my logic doesn't always coincide with the store merchandisers. But I haven't encountered oddities such as beer with diapers, which could be okay if that was just beer were found with alcoholic beverages in addition to the impulse placement.
Here is my biggest gripe, despite numerous mentions at the corporate, store, and department levels, the butchers don't use special gloves to handle meat but rather use plastic bags to pick up meat and then turn the bags inside out to seal, leaving the ink to bleed on the meat. There is one young kid who seemed to remember me and my request but the others make me correct them. This drives me a bit bonkers though I did manage to get a $10 gift card after lodging one of my complaints. I've taken to pre-packaged meats on sale as a result.
Still, the grocery store I frequent does an outstanding job, which I had always thought but see know that I read your post and comments. They ask if you found everything and if you didn't, dispatch someone to fetch it. They offer to take your groceries to the car. They issue refunds if produce is bad (though I've never tried it) and also if the meat turns out to be bad (have tried it successfully). Their store brands are better than national brands. They get more cashiers out if there are people 3 deep in line. And, as I mentioned earlier, they don't act like you are a no-count for complaining.
I worry more about the deli or bakery not using gloves than whether the butcher does. You are probably picking up more germs and bacteria by touching your cart, or the items you pick up throughout the store. The meat, most people cook to temps that are recommended for killing harmful bacteria. Things that are already cooked are just going to be eaten without any special cooking to kill bad bacteria.
Also, the ink on those plastic bags, are not toxic. If you are worried about that, you should see all the ink stamped on the outside fat of the meat you buy before it is cut up.
If you don't like the way someone is handling your food, you really should speak up about it. Most food handlers and counter people are more than happy to handle your food however you ask them too, especially, if you are polite about it. And chances are if you use that store on a regular basis, that person will eventually recognize you & take care of you that way, without you having to ask.
The aisles are already narrow and they take up a quarter of the aisle with a temporary display. It prevents two carts from passing each other in the aisle. I assume it's done to sell more of that item, but also to slow you down and perhaps increase sales of the items on the shelves around it.
Has anyone ever worked retail before? I see a lot of complaints that I can't imagine coming from the mouths of the minimum wage slaves working at the grocery store I work at.
For instance- yes, we run out of sale items. There are a lot of ways this can happen. The company doesn't have enough product. The warehouse doesn't have enough product. The order didn't get sent. The order did get sent, but the product didn't get sent to us. The driver dropped off our load at another store. Three people called in sick and there is no way we can send someone to unload the load. It was ordered in, arrived, and put away, but then the entire box got damaged. The vendor, who brings in their own product (think Pepsi or Nabisco) is sick. And if we do order in a lot of product, and it doesn't all sell, we get yelled at for having too much overstock when the sale is over. Obviously, we strive to have product, but no company is going to order in the correct amount every time.
Items no longer being carried- sometimes, this is because the company itself doesn't make the product anymore. Sometimes, they were testing the product out in a new region, and it failed to take off there. Think of ketchup flavored Pringles- they are not available everywhere in America. Also, if we no longer carry an item, or never carried an item, we will bring it in for our customers if they ask and we can.
I find a lot of these comments hilarious in the "oh **** did you really say that?" kind of way.
Stores run out of stock, as someone else explained. Stuff doesn't show up, people don't come in, we get cleared out by the nice Vietnamese family that runs one of the nearby scratch-and-dent/dollar/general corner stores that fills up ten carts with bottles of soda and bleach because the store chickened out at setting a min. per customer, so on and so forth. If you want something THAT badly, you show up the first day of the sale. If you don't, take the raincheck and shut it. Better yet, learn your local grocery store's sale cycle...it's not hard to do. I am so sick of people screaming at desk-clerks at 10:59 PM the last night of the sale because we're out of Diet Zero Coke with lemon lime or whatever.
Stores get money for putting products at certain levels. This has been mentioned on this blog before. When a new company is going to pay more money or GM is upping the ante? You damn well bet they're going to rearrange. Stores also do replace shelving, lighting, and reformat aisles every so often in an attempt to make things more efficient (frosting and cake mix and sugar in the same aisle? Duh.) It's not THAT hard to figure stuff like this out either...someone above mentioned parm. cheese in a can being put with lunch meat and it's obvious why. Both are processed. People who tend to buy one processed thing are more likely to buy another.
And as for upping prices...y'all took economics in high school, didn't you? Supply. Demand. Those words are your friends.
I guess what I've noticed about the sale thing is when I absolutely DO show up the very first day of the sale and wait for the doors to open. And processed with processed . . . well, I guess it makes sense to somebody but nearly everything is processed these days so categories would tend to make more sense I would think. I've already stated I understand the business decision with the price hikes, it just irritates me when there's no real fluctuation in the supply. (sort of like when the sit the oil tankers off shore and tell us there's a "shortage")
However, the location switch thing . . . total pain in my neck. Especially when they move all of it to a particular new spot. I can see if it's on sale and they want to put it somewhere people would see it if they came in for something else. For example the laundry soap next to the dairy story someone mentioned above. The thing is though, it sounds like they didn't put his laundry detergent on sale, and they moved ALL of it to the new location, while leaving the other kinds in the aisle where they had bin.
When a store has phones around on aisle ends to call quickly and get an answer, that's fine. But due to staffing cutbacks and temporary hires, it's getting more and more difficult to find anyone to help you at all, let alone someone who knows where it is. I'm not saying that's the floor person's fault. I am saying that it's highly annoying. I can also understand some of the stocking issues someone mentioned above, but we all know some stores are chronic at playing this game. That's when I cross over into being seriously upset. But that's just me. Others may feel differently.
I do appreciate the retail folks stopping by and at least sharing some of the inside info. Thanks!
One store I only go to if I need one or two items is the most notorious for stocking items in odd places. Looked for french fries all up and down the frozen aisle with veggies, breads etc. Finally found someone to ask, they were in the ice cream aisle. Seriously it was ice cream, ice cream, ice cream, oh french fries, tater tots, then ice cream, etc. How do they go together? The other point is when I mentioned I finally found someone to ask. How come you can never find anyone to ask a question to anymore?
One more thing I worked in clothing retail years ago, so I know how frustrating it can be. But is appears some who are in retail and have posted here need a break from their jobs. The anger in some of their posts is kind of scary....
Eh. Not that strange. It's a similar idea to the parm. cheese in a can and the lunchmeat in the same aisle; people who are going to buy ice cream are more likely to buy fries. OR, freezer space is at a premium. You can only cram so much into one frozen section.
Besides, the amount of freezer potato products are INSANE. In both stores here, they've had their own little section. I swear, potato overload.
And LOL, we're not scary. We're just complaining just like customers who have no idea how the system works are complaining about the system, you know? Only, we tend to get more pissed off because we know how it works.
That's definitely a new one on me. I've always seen the fries and potato puffs in the veggie aisle. This one might take the cake, although we'll have to consider it even with the pizza crust in the tampon aisle. Crack me up.
Are just as much at the receiving end of bad managements decisions (like cutting staff & putting new part timers in charge of large areas so they don't know where anything is) as customers.
The difference is, as a customer I can just stop shopping there. And when they do stuff like this (decide not to carry basic items, especially) I definitely do.
P&G was having an awesome rebate at K-Mart - $10 off if you buy $35 of product. Too bad the coupon the store had posted by the products had expired over a week ago, so the rebate wouldn't have worked!
That's a deceptive bit of merchandising on K-Mart's part.
on average things go on sale approximately once every 12 weeks...some things more often, others less.
Grandfather owned a grocery store...thats how it works.
Aisles are also set up to usually have one side expensive items other side inexpensive in order to keep the inventory moving.
Constant rearranging is often caused by one supplier upping the shelf premium they pay the store for prime shelf space thus shifting someone out of place.
Though where some things are located is still baffling....Wally World doesn't keep bar soap with the laundry and other cleaning supplies...its up front in the Cosmetics section.
and I still have the same issues/problems expressed by lots of folks here.
I don't care how much money you make. If you don't want to do your job, quit. Don't take it out on customers by giving attitude when we ask for help (We're not stupid. We know you often have stock but you simply are too lazy to go and get it and open it up or have been instructed not to.)
And as for sufficient stock, this has always been an issue in big-city stores as they literally don't have a place to put stuff. Sometimes if you miss the first few hours of the weekly sale, you might catch a second chance on the next delivery of the week (ask the manager).
The other issue is that some items sell out because, wait for it, they are purchased by the store staff. Cause when a store opens at 9 and you are there and there is NO stock and they tell you: It sold out already, that is just bull.
Stores ARE in business to make money and you do that by listening to your customers and finding ways to serve them. THAT is how you develop loyal customers who will continue to patronize you even when times are tough.
It costs stores so much more to get new customers, you'd think they would listen to their customers but no, NO, NOOOOOO.
That's why so many stores don't do good business.
They don't stock what people want. They run out. They overprice when they think they can get away with it, and all the other stuff listed in the article.
As for stuff not being stocked because it doesn't sell, absolutely not always the case. Soooo much else goes into keeping stuff stocked on store shelves (many companies pay stores and when they stop, POOF, there go the products!)
For the most part, I now shop online when I can for non-perishables. Not always possible (price, timing, availability, etc.) but I love places like drugstore.com and amazon.com. Yes, you have to watch for sales and specials, but you can get some great deals.
We live in a big city so we don't have the big box stores and we really don't get great bargains at our supermarkets. (We shop at local "specialty" retailers that often have lower prices, and at the multitude of fruit/vegetable stands (on practically every corner, 24/7. LOVE IT!).
We have only one Trader Joe's and it's too far to schlepp with lots of bags (which is why you go. Great stuff. Great prices. Great service.) What you save on wine alone is amazing.
Y'all who live out of town crack me up when you say you can't find stuff. You've got huge supermarket chains, tons of box stores and discounters. It's soooo much easier than city shopping.
Good article and it made me realize: I'm not alone with my retail fatigue and aggravation!
Yo fifty-three...cause trucks ALWAYS show up, amirite? ESPECIALLY to lower-income stores.
Us big bad GROCERY (not retail, for the love of whole wheat crackers there is a difference there) people just love to **** with customers, yeah? Cause our day becomes so much better when we ruin yours.
Dude...I think this pisses me off more than the time I was physically assaulted by a customer.
#53 - Thanks for stopping by. I really appreciate the "both sides" comment. I do have to say though, that "out of town" is relative. There's out of town with all of the things you mentioned, and then there's "really, really out of town". I'm sort of out of town now, but was REALLY out of town last year at our old place. As in, four hours to a hospital or a Sam's Club. Now those things are all within an hour drive. Not right down the street, but doable. Have you checked out the folks at sustainablepantry.com? They seem to have a nice system for keeping things stocked in the city. Sort of the combo approach you mentioned with some online shopping and other stuff local.
Very thought provoking article Myscha. Got me to thinking so much that I wrote a follow up post at my blog.
The things we find inconvenient such as not being able to find something because the store has moved it actually make money for the store.
Grocery stores profit from our inconvenience! When we are searching for that item that's been moved we tend to buy more things.
Long lines at the check-out are inconvenient for us but make us a captive audiences more likely to purchase the candy bars and magazines.
The next time something inconveniences you in the grocery store take a second to ask how this inconvenience may profit the store.
