Am I the only one feeling super unconfortable seeing these types of memes when the next article in my feed is about how 25% of people worldwide don’t have access to clean water?
No, you are not. The vast majority of people here and anywhere else on the Internet live in a luxury bubble compared to most of the world and a disturbing amount of them will never realise that.
This is why I can’t fuck with Trader Joe’s.
I swear Trader Joes does this specifically to make you walk the whole store. It’s small enough that you’re probably walking the whole thing anyway, but I can never just run in and grab what I might need.
100%. I don’t know how people shop there. It’s like a place to wander around and find random stuff.
My brain rearranges the grocery store shelves just fine. It’s a dystopian adventure every time I go shopping. Maybe I have alcoholic dementia from my drinking days.
Bruh, i just experienced this yesterday. I had my kid with me too, so I was on edge and distracted and couldnt find the goddamn cauliflower
The new Aldi layout at mine is terrible. The vegetables are right at the entrance, which clogs things up because everyone browses vegetables. Plus basically all the regular groceries are in one aisle now, so its all crowded.
I just don’t understand why the international foods are a separate aisle. Can those sauces not sit next to the other sauces? Can all types of noodles not co-exist in the same aisle? Why can’t masa flour live next to wheat flour?
The more I think about this, the more it annoys me.
There’s a lot of time and money spent analyzing where to put things to maximize customer spending. It’s why milk and eggs are usually at the back of the store, so that you have to walk through the entire store to get them, and you may find something else to buy on the way there. It’s also why “low-interest” items like international foods get put together in their own low-traffic aisle.
That’s also why they rearrange things - not to optimise the layout, but because they hope people will impulse-buy things while looking for the things which have moved
International foods might be “low interest” for many consumers, but for me it’s the most interesting aisle in the supermarket.
Nothing I like more than finding some unusual (to me!) stuff, so I’m happy they put it all in the same place.
As far as price goes, it’s all over. You might find a bottle of Japanese Kewpie mayo for way more than speciality Asian supermarkets ask for, but on the other hand find a huge bag of pistachio nuts for way less money (by volume) than they’re charging for nuts in the ‘regular’ nuts section.
It’s genuinely as if supermarkets know they need to sell this stuff, but haven’t quite worked out what to do with it yet.
You know the worst part of it? The reason why is to encourage the “hunter, gatherer” mode in your lizard brain. It’s basically a trick to get you to do impulse purchases.
i don’t get angry because they rearranged the store, i get angry because they ONLY rearranged the store so some worthless, nepo-baby dipshit can justify their existence at the company because they came to the conclusion–after 25 focus groups-- that it’d increase shareholder value by $0.0003 to move the pasta to aisle 3
I think you vastly overestimate the size of grocery store’s budgets
I figured they just do it regularly so customers have to look at more extra shit they might impulse buy, rather than based on some study of product location adjacency.
Having worked stock in a grocery store, this is part of it. After asking alot of different people at different levels, the consensus is that shelf space is also paid for by many brands, and what space goes to who is decided way above the store level. So once in a while the stockers get paperwork that moves a ton of stuff around, and no one who works in that location has the authority to say no. Sure, sometimes a manager will do that anyway, but they always have a reason, and it’s usually something about the reality of the store configuration, like not putting too many cold items near warm areas, to keep humidity down and reduce spoil.
typical shareholder meeting in america:
ceo: i’ve come to a stunning conclusion, and i don’t want to ruffle too many feathers or cause a heart attack–we know what happened to MCfunky last week.
uneasy laughter
ceo: but i have a crazy idea that i’m sure is going to shock everyone in the room, and i’m hesitant to even say this out loud, but, how about we cut one employee per store and raise the prices on ALL items by a nickel!
the room of shareholders went completely silent, until the oldest of the bunch cut a huge fart. what happened next was a raucous laughter that wasn’t heard since the first test screening of ‘a princess bride’ and a round of applause that was usually reserved for a barack obama speech @ $200k a seat (champagne optional).
the forbes editor who was deployed to the meeting immediately came in his pants and a rothschild graciously committed to buying him a new pair, despite the known frugality of the ultra-wealthy (they wouldn’t be rich if they didn’t know how to work a penny). she told him, ‘meet me on rodeo drive next week and i got you covered’ but he missed the appointment because he was supposed to cover alysa liu’s birthday extravaganza.
she was fat anyway, at least that what he told himself. she was kinda fat by european or asian standards but we were in america and the rules of the wild west still apply. who cares how much money she has. alysa dyed her hair green this week. that’s all that really matters,.
That was actually me job for a year. I was that asshole at Walmart that moved everything. Better than stocking shelves since it was full time M-F. I still hate it 10 years after i left since i can’t locate shit at my Walmart. They moved the pharmacy section all the way across the store.
Some nights my job was to really deep clean the shelves and move maybe a few items to make room for a new product.
The problems came when our sheets tell us how much goes on a shelf and it’seven on the la els but then they just move the tags because they don’t want the cereal to look empty at that section. They also doesn’t like me in the back room because i would bring back loads of overstock because you let an employee stock an 12 boxes of cherios family size on the shelf and I’m following corporate guidelines that say that size should have 2 facings, not 4.
I will say cap 3, mod team, or whatever they call it was still the best job i had at walmart.
It’s because they keep doing it wrong!
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Never gotten mad or irritated about this. The only times where it happens, at least here in Sweden, is when they renovate/expand the store (which very much isn’t often). It only happens when it’s a good thing. And I like walking around and discovering the new layout and see what they did with the space and modernised tech.
In the states it can happen several times a year for many stores
Not mad. Quietly dissapointed, heavy sigh, start searching.
I kinda miss grocery stores. Where I stay now there isn’t a single store like that, just many small shops. You get used to things maybe being there, maybe not.
I have ADHD and don’t notice nor remember where the things used to be :^)
Must be frustrating to always search for the items you use every day.
And how TF do I get to the supermarket I’ve been using for 15 years?!
