- Sales calls during dinner.
- Road construction that reduces traffic to a single lane.
- Zippers that jam.
- Getting gasoline on your business clothes when you fill up on the way to work.
- Out-of-stock items.
- Office 2007.
- Plastic forks that break off in your food.
- Bubble packs that cannot be opened.
But in recent years, the grocery store nearest my house has "reorganized" the store about every 18 months or two years. Just when you learn where to find the peanut butter, it's suddenly gone from that location, replaced by organic pine nuts or something.
And you know what happens then: up and down every single aisle, some more than once, like a culinary Diogenes with his lighted lamp, until I finally locate the peanut butter in its new, seemingly random location. I hate that! And then the same routine for finding paper towels. Augh.
An aside -- yes, I know that it is a good marketing tactic to get me to walk up and down every aisle and actually LOOK at what is on the shelves. But if I am irritated, does that cancel out the marketing advantage? What if I just want to find the canola oil quickly and leave?
And if they were improving the logic of the locations, putting like-items together, that would be understandable. But no. Last night I found the peanut butter on the aisle with the cheese. And I never did find the cooking oil, so that's still on the list. It's probably in the automotive section. (We won't even talk about why there is an automotive section in the grocery store!)
I never thought I would order my groceries online, but I think I'm a step closer!
2 comments:
How much are you willing to pay to get your groceries online? I'd think if I could get them delivered I'd pay enough to make it worth their time. The only downfall to that is that they don't know how I like my fruit, and I don't trust them to get stuff like that right.
On the other hand, if I'm paying a premium it'd probably be from a better grocery store that didn't have bad fruit, so maybe that's the solution. I'd be willing to give it a shot, that's for sure.
There is an automotive section in the grocery store because they know that I don't want to traipse over to Wal-Mart for a quart of motor oil. And on the few occasions that I have to use that section, I am quite grateful.
And while we screen all our calls and I almost never fill up in the morning, I did once go through three plastic forks at an ill-conceived all-you-can-eat hotcake promotion at McDonald's.
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