Supermarket Pet Peeves

Seriously fatty and so delicious. They rarely make it out of my kitchen …hanging head in shame

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All of our stores have gone to the upright version in your second picture above.

The older Market Baskets in the New England area have narrow aisles. They also stock during the shopping day, so you’re dealing with that. But as they build newer stores, the overall footprint is larger, AND the aisles are wider. Most of their enclosed freezer space are the uprights, but they do have a small area of open horizontal freezers - maybe 4 of them total, side-to-side and back-to back. But aisles haven’t been narrowed because of them.

As for those shoppers who park their cart in the way and walk away? I’ve got no issue with moving their cart to get by.

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Those who leave their cart and walk away and leaving their purse in the cart :dizzy_face:

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:joy:

A non-Jewish colleague of mine told me about being a guest at his Orthodox college roommate’s home and getting quick on-the-job training about the kitchen rules (and the serve-yourself-out-of-the-fridge rules) from his roommate’s family. Everyone was good-natured about his “table manners.”

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Maybe the horizontal freezers use less electricity and are a cost cutting measure? The vertical ones lose a lot of cold air every time the door is opened.
mts mentioned that it might be efficiency based and i think that may be a large part of it.

When I encounter carts that other shoppers have left as obstructions while they wander down the aisle, I add stuff to their cart.

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I have no idea why the sliding ‘doors’ on a horizontal freezer would be opened less often than the vertical ones, except that they typically have much fewer items in them.

The horizontal freezers at my nearby Albertsons are open on top with no coverings at all. That has to be pretty inefficient.

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Use of vertical or horizontal freezers comes down to marketing and sales tactic by the supermarket to get you to buy more frozen food items.

Instead of having vertical freezers that are closed off with glass doors you have to open to inspect the products inside more carefully, some markets have horizontal freezer bins with open tops. This makes it especially easy to reach in and grab what you need, or to turn a package over to inspect the ingredients, all without having to physically open a barrier to inspect the item.

Importantly there’s no glass door and the low level of freezers bring shoppers physically closer to the frozen items. It allows the freedom to check out the packaging more leisurely and without the blast of cold air.

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Great idea! Things like a stool softener, Depends or a quart of 10/40W motor oil? :smiling_imp:
I will park my cart in one area that wouldn’t seem obstructive to others and shop around the store, returning with the items to put in the cart. Unfortunately my cart sometimes goes missing and I have to start all over again. Or sometimes I find the stuff I had in my cart piled on a shelf near where I left my cart because of some @sshole. I once had made ‘Not finished shopping’ notes that I would put on my goods. That didn’t work. I swear, someone is out there making it their mission to mess with me.

I’m not a leave my cart and shop person, but if a cart’s in my way I will move it. And I’ve never put stuff in someone else’s cart–the only person it inconveniences are the store employees. As the person unloads the cart, they’ll realize the items aren’t theirs and either leave them by the side or tell the cashier they don’t want them–then the employee has to have them returned to the shelf.

And don’t get me started on the women who leave their pocketbooks (usually wide open) in their carts. Just yesterday there was a discussion of this on my neighborhood site. Apparently thieves are taking purses in Giant and the going across the street and using the credit cards at Target before the victim has a chance to cancel them Apparently “nothing can be done” to combat this? Ummm . . .carry your pocketbook over your shoulder and don’t leave it in the cart? :thinking:

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Midlife, cold air tends to stay lower and warm air tends to rise, so a horizontal freezer w the “doors” on top will lose a LOT less cold air when the doors are opened vs a vertical freezer where the cold air will cascade to the floor, which is why Albertsons has horizintal freezers w no doors at all. My H Mart had the doorless horizontal freezers for their seafood and they seem to keep the seafood frozen fairly well.
Horizontal freezers DO lose cold air but they lose a lot less.
Or so i have been led to believe.

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I’ve never understood this. God invented shoulders for a purpose - like hanging stuff off of them.

OK: a peeve: people sampling from olive bars/prepared food bars, like it’s an hors d’œuvres tray. And yes, I tell the store personnel when I see it. I swear I saw a guy roll up to a prepared seafood bar once and start chowing down - with the spoon.

Obviously sneeze guards aren’t enough …

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Mostly those at the lower quality of the market. There are numerous branches of UK supermarkets around me including two that are equidistant from my house. One, a Morrisons utilises a coin-operated release scheme while the other, a Waitrose, does not. Similarly the local Sainsbury’s and Tescos (of which there are multiples in easy reach of where I live) also use coin-operated releases. Reminds me of humourist par excellence the late Alan Coren who once opined on air “that Sainsbury’s exists to keep the riff-raff out of Waitrose.” The use of coin relaase is nothing but a class riddled system.

:nauseated_face:

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Yikes. I thought the guy at the Price Chopper who grabs a boiled egg from the salad bar and pops it in his mouth was bad.

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Serious question, I don’t understand cart parkers. Why make multiple trips back you your cart when you can just take it with you? Seems so ineffecient. :crazy_face:

It’s not at all, especially if you need to use one of those large-ass, Cadillac-sized carts & need to navigate them through the produce section. I always park my cart in whichever section I am & grab things to put them in the cart. I’m a personal shopper & much prefer this method. It’s far more efficient than taking the cart all over.

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Exercize. Toe and heel lifts while waiting in line, too.

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Yeah, it’s an easy way to get your 10,000 steps in.