Redesigning a perfectly acceptable grocery store? Fail.

So there I was, this past Sunday night, at 8:35pm, getting ready to go grocery shopping.  Ideally I should be getting the weekly shopping trip done on a Saturday afternoon, but lately it's been sliding into the last possible time slot late on a Sunday night.  I shop two places: I first hit Super Target to get all of the canned goods, household-type stuff (t.p., detergent, soap, diapers, etc..), bread and cookies/crackers.  It is much cheaper there.  I categorically refuse to shop at Walmart.  I cannot fathom shopping for food and smelling the yucky smell of tires at the same time.  It just doesn't work for me.  Besides....have you seen the people of Walmart?  :)  Even in our little patch of Heaven here in Colorado there are some scary-assed people who shop there.

Anyways... back to the story.  I realize it's 8:35, and Target closes at 9pm on Sundays.  Stupid Target.  So I grabbed my list, purse and shopping bags and threw a 'good-bye' over my shoulder.  I made inside the Target building at 8:47.  I threw my stuff in the cart and took off.  I never stopped the cart moving.  I was still moving as I chucked this-and-that into the cart.  I entered the lanes at exactly 9pm, with an overflowing cart.  Mind you, a big bulk of the cart was filled with large packages of paper towels, toilet paper and a box of diapers.  I was on fire!  (I have to celebrate the victories...no matter how small).

I then headed down the road to the grocery store.  I put on my headphones (the only reason I love to do the grocery shopping is so that I can get some time to just zone out) and struck out for the far side of the store.  I am a creature of habit.  I walk along the exact same serpentine-style path throughout the store, every time.  A couple of years ago I decided that I should write up my grocery list so that it follows that path.  I went to the store and hung out for about three hours, with clipboard in hand, and as I walked down each aisle, looking L & R, I wrote down every last possible item that I would normally use in day-to-day meal prep.  Each aisle is numbered, and I always enter a particular aisle from a specific direction, and the list for that aisle is in the order I encounter it.  I listed the entire dairy case as I would walk along it in the back of the store, and then broke up the meat department, deli, bakery and produce.

I am sensing some serious eye-rolling going on.  C'mon!   All I can say is that this system shaves an incredible amount of time off of a normal shopping trip.  There is no back-tracking (unless you forgot to put something on the list), and the simple act of working through a list removes any need to strain your brain and actually think.  I am typically 'done' with thinking at about 5pm everyday.  I can't go much beyond that.  I just print off a list when I am ready, I open up the cupboards and look at what we are low on, fill in what I need for any of my recipes for that week's menu and I am good to go.  I also have a list for Target, but it is just broken into categories because it was designed for the older Target.  Now that I do some of the grocery shopping there, I need to tweak it and actually break it out into aisles as well.

So.  Here is my predicament.  I walked back to my usual starting place in the back corner - working along the dairy case, when I notice that there is a small army of temporary workers filling grocery carts with stuff.  Uh-oh.  They were emptying the shelves.  Lots of shelves.  I had to fight off some guy just so I could grab the last gallon of milk.  Dude!  My poor starving children need milk to drink!  As I walked along, swatting away hands so that I could get some butter and yogurt, I stopped and asked a team of two younger guys filling a cart what it was that they were doing.  (Was there some sort of eColi outbreak going on??)  "Oh, well, we are moving stuff around."  Shit.

I gathered up the rest of my groceries and went to the checkout.  I went through a lane with two younger guys (Why choose the guys?  Because they tend to spill the beans more.  They love to bitch about their jobs, so they are the ones to go to when you want the dirt).  Yep.  Just as I feared.  The idiots at corporate, who never set foot in a grocery store themselves because their wives or housekeepers do it, made the decision that our store needed a remodel.  Which means that EVERYTHING will be moving around, over the next several months.  Items will be moved, and then moved again.  Worse yet, the design will be similar to the other stores in town, where the long, parallel aisles are a thing of the past.  Islands, diagonals, intersections... it will be an organizational nightmare.

I have just one question.  WHY WHY WHY do they not ask us - the primary grocery shoppers - what we would like in a store?  Where was the survey?  If we are the ones opening our wallets each and every week, forking over hundreds of dollars for over-priced food - shouldn't we have a say in what the shopping 'environment' should be like?

Here is what I would say:

Don't roll your pallets of food out at 9 o'clock at night.  You are IN MY WAY. 

Please restock the bananas.

Adults should be able to get a free cookie too.

Ban the plastic shopping bags.  Really.

Make the aisles wider.  When I can't get my cart around the three frat boys arguing over how many cans of pork-n-beans to buy, I get massivly irritated.

Same goes for the lovey-dovey twenty-somethings that flock to the store in the late-evening hours to figure out what they are going to make for dinner - they aimlessly wander - arm-in-arm of all things, up and down the aisles.

Please stop shoving candybars in my face in the checkout lane.

You need to put handwipes/sanitizer by the meat case.

I know this seems like a petty little thing, when such serious stuff is happening all over the globe.  But, when in your own little existence the weekly shopping trip is considered your 'sanity saving get-away', it's huge.