I am the son of a grocer. That’s right, my Dad ran a grocery store. He sold food for a living. And, as such, I grew up knowing a little bit about the grocery trade, just because I was exposed to it at an early age. We were the family that got the dented cans. No one likes to buy these, so Dad would bring them home. Of course, there are various reasons why a can may be dented. Fortunately, none of those reasons appeared to be botulism.
As a result of my upbringing, and the fact that I spent a portion of my formative years working in the grocery business, I am somewhat sensitive to the placement of items in a grocery store. My brain forms a mental map of each aisle, and after a single trip, I can usually find anything I want by throwing a subconscious query into the back of my head, which then returns a visual along with a general location. (GPS coordinates would be cool, but I guess that would be asking for too much). Because I form this intimidate relationship with the grocery store, I am highly vulnerable to alterations in the placement of objects within the store. For example, if you move the spices from the front of aisle four to the back of aisle five, I’m liable to freak out when I find them missing. It’s like going to see some landmark, only to find it’s gone! I’m left standing there, gasping, like a fish out of water. Why am I having this reaction? It’s almost like a panic attack. I have an irrational need to find the spices now. I have to locate them and edit the map in my head. It’s practically fricken OCD.
Okay, so last week, I go into the grocery store and guess what? They have hired some company to “optimize” the placement of content in the store. What that means is, they’re moving everything. They were doing it right in front of me. It was awful! I was left wandering through the aisles, remembering the good times I used to have there. The cereal aisle, which was now full of chips, seemed simply wrong without Tony the Tiger and Lucky the Leprechaun staring back at me. Instead Chester Cheetah was there, and he doesn’t belong in that aisle. Chester was like an invader. But even Chester wasn’t happy. I could tell from his face on the bag that his smile was a little droopy. No, Chester wasn’t any more pleased about this than the Jolly Green Giant or the Planters Peanut, who had far less exposed positions than they used to have.
Just yesterday, I returned to the store (now that they’re done moving everything), and I was lost. I mean I was fricken LOST. I couldn’t find anything. I used to be able to go into that store and find my stuff and get out within about ten minutes or less. This time, it took me an hour. And I don’t have time to re-map my entire brain. As far as I’m concerned, this is worse than going into a new store. Because the layout’s familiar, my brain keeps expecting things to be located somewhere else. I need to unlearn the entire store, but I can’t. Something is blocking me from re-encoding the positions of the content located in the store. I have no choice but to quit shopping there.
This really pisses me off. The other stores don’t have any cheap meat. And I usually like grocery shopping. So now I’ve only got three choices: put up with the weirdness and hope my brain adapts, send my wife to get the groceries, or go to a different store. As I usually go for the “personal shock therapy” approach to adaptation, I’ve decided to take the first option and keep shopping there, forcing my brain to adapt. It will be a painful process, but I think I can anchor on the bakery because they didn’t move it.
“Optimized for easy access” my ass…
Filed under: Bitching, society, Weird Tagged: | grocery aisle, grocery store, product placement, resorting groceries
thank goodness for the botulism disclaimer…. you must have heard my internal screaming.
I don’t remember ever getting sick from a dented can. Of course, my mother threw away all the dented cans of fish, so maybe that’s why.
Why is it whenever someone changes things to make it “easier” it is usually the complete opposite?
The grocery store around the corner from my house did a major change of layout too and it is FAR from intuitive! I’d like to know what the heck they were thinking!
Yes, who are these people? Why do they think they can “optimize” the layout of a grocery store? What are they doing, putting the stuff no one wants in the front so you have to pass buy it on the way to the back to find the stuff you really want?
I don’t want to be away from the security of my apartment any longer than I absolutely have to. It was bad enough that my old grocer sold me some bad meat, forcing me to have to learn the layout of a whole new store. But then, just as I’d completed the “layout memorization process,” they too decided that things were better off in different places. It was all I could do to keep from screaming out loud. My grocery list, a must have for quick in-and-out shopping, lists items in the order they are positioned in the store! Argh!
Maybe they should offer software that computes a route through the store for you based on your entry point and the items you want to purchase. That would be cool. They could offer it online, and send the signals to your GPS. You just take the GPS into the store and it will tell you, “Turn right, walk two meters and to the left you will find the peanut butter.”
Saw this over on Randshit’s Blog and immediately thought of your post. Combine a powered version of this thing with your GPS idea and you might have something really cool… Or really crazy!
Here in Britain “they” change the aisle layouts every 4-6 weeks to just trap us in there longer! My father had his own small corner store for some years after he retired and enjoyed so doing. I learned to do Value Added Tax paperwork; he discovered that you could wipe “use by dates” off platic wrappers by using nail varnish remover… I dread to recall now!
Trapping people in the store may be the secret evil plan of these “optimization” companies. That makes perfect sense. Over here, they operate in the guise of helpful supermarket efficiency experts.
The use-by dates: we didn’t use nail varnish, but I know we sometimes stamped an additional date on there, and then told people the older date was in error, and that the newer dates were only placed on objects after they were “inspected” to “ensure freshness.” If you see two dates stamped on an item, don’t assume they second date was stamped there by the FDA.
They want you to be lost because the longer you are in the store the more money you will potentially spend. Thankfully my local Publix has only made minor tweaks to its layout since I’ve been going there or I would be really confused. It’s like someone rearranging your desk at work while you are on vacation. Cruel!
Maybe you have to have a strong sadistic streak.
yeah, once the store is built and the cans are on the shelves, game over.
I wonder what qualifies someone as a grocery optimizer?
I’m not sure. Imagine what your life would be like if you took an occupational aptitude test and went to see your councilor and he told you that the results of your test indicated that you should be a grocery store inventory optimization specialist. I’m thinking that this would be a perfect character for a story about a guy who ends up psychotic.
Just do like I do and go up and down every aisle.
You mean browsing? Yeah, I do that sometimes, particularly when I’m being cheap because that’s the best way to find what’s on sale. Sometimes I’ll go through the store and only buy the sales items. It doesn’t matter if I needed them or not, they were on sale!
What does optimizing the placement of foods really mean? It sounds dumb to me. Everyone is going to be totally confused and hate this store. Are they going to put obscure stuff, like Gefilte Fish in a really premium place in the hopes that sales of Gefilte Fish will skyrocket? Well, it won’t.
Well I know I was totally confused and hated it, but after the reorg they added a pizzeria and a sushi bar and had a “Grand Reopening.” So they’ll probably get more business, at least for a little while, and the new people won’t know or care that the store has been reorganized because they never knew it the way it was. This will enable the general manager to hold up stats in the next regional meeting to show how his sales have gone up since the reorg – thus providing further incentive to the other general managers to perform similar acts. And so on and so on. The next thing you know, groceries are flying every where and no one knows where anything is.
Pizzeria? Sushi Bar? I’m listening…
writerdood i can assure you with all my professional knowledge that “optimising” the grocery store is NOT about trying to optimise it for the customer rather its for optimising profit and boosting sales. If you know exactly where you are going for your groceries you are less likely to buy extra stuff you dont need or want..but they will move things around everynow and then so that your visual scope is widened and you see things uve not seen before…eg..there is a trend here in Australia where the big supermarkets are bringing out their own self branded products. so they shift things around so that the first thing you see (based on the laziness and convience theorem) is their product, then you will see big price tags on it emphasizing their lower price.. Its all about consumer manipulation. its really a beautiful thing when u think about it haha…
ps i love small business owners. big fan! go grocery store owner guy!
Thank you.
I find your skeptical pessimism refreshing.
lol its not skeptical pessimism it was all part of the studies (and practices during professional career) we did at university for international marketing hahaha
Susi is right. I took some marketing classes back in the Dark Ages and even then, supermarkets were prime examples of all sorts of marketing strategies. Knowing that, of course, makes me even more unhappy when my supermarket does one of those rearrangement things. I’m still trying to figure out why the last upheaval left some cheeses at one end of the store by the deli counter and some at the other end of the store by the dairy cases.
I would guess they figured some people wanting cheese might look in dairy and others in the deli. In the documentation world, we’d leave a cross reference: “For more cheese, see The Deli. (Where Deli would be a hyperlink).
Maybe they should try something like this. You know, leave a sign that says, “Looking for more cheese? For additional cheeses, try the Deli!”
I despise grocery shopping. If I were rich, I would pay someone to go do it for me.
That’s how I feel about clothes shopping. Except I don’t know if I’d ever trust anyone to do that for me. I might end up wearing paisleys or something.
okay dood!
not to complain here but you’re freakin’ posts are too freakin’ l-o-n-g! remember, i went to school in alabama so anything longer than the farm report and my mind starts doing all kinds of drifting…. LOOK! a butterfly!! ~ anyway i chose paragraphs #5 and #6 about reality to keep my thoughts organized. my thought on reality is this:
it’s waaaay over-rated! best to stay in an alternate dimension… but that’s just me..
i may have gone to school in alabama but i actually do know the difference between you’re and your… i’m just seeing if you’re on your toes today.
honestly, i have no idea how my comment ended up on this post. i intended it to be posted to your post Taking the Bridge. geez…
That’s odd. I wonder why it put your post here.
Anyway, as I recall, Alabama actually is an alternate dimension. It was annexed by our universe way back in 1893 during a brief struggle between interpretations of commercial concepts regarding the pleasantries of abstraction in mental absentia. Good for us though. Before that there was just a big hole there.
brilliant reply dood!! i bow to your impressive imagination and witty way with words!