Scott Adams Cries Out to the Heavens in a Blog Post
…with a simple, heartrending title:
I Want My Cheese
…When I walk into the store, and realize I didn’t bring my reusable bags, I feel like an absent-minded moron. This is how I usually feel during the day, so it’s no big deal.
Then I start looking for cheese, only to discover that some genius in Safeway’s marketing department thinks that cheese should be spread out over about seven different locations throughout the store. You have your cottage cheese here, your artisanal cheeses there, your shredded cheeses somewhere else, and so on. There is no logical order to any of it. Five minutes into my shopping, I am filled with rage and I feel manipulated. I assume someone at Safeway decided that inconveniencing me would somehow make me buy more shit because I end up walking down every frickin’ aisle in the store looking for my cheese. It’s not the inconvenience that bugs me so much as the feeling of manipulation.
When I’m ready to pay, I see long lines at the human checkout stands and short lines at the self-checkout. I know from experience that using the self-checkout, which was designed by a crack team of practical jokers, sadists, and monkeys that have been abused by their trainers, will bring me to frustration. I know I will inadvertently move my bag before the system believes I should and it will proclaim to all nearby shoppers that I might be a shoplifter. I will feel humiliated, incompetent, stupid, and shamed…
Read it.
Fun, Life, Nanny State, Politics | tree hugging sister | 
February 25, 2013 9:51 pm
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It aint just the cheese. Grocery stores move everything around periodically. They undoubtedly have sales numbers to justify the practice.
I diverge from the writer on the use of self-checkouts. The hoardes are afraid of them and I’m OK with that. I am not as fast as the fastest cashiers but I’m as fast or faster than the rest of them. I can get in and out before some of the other patrons have moved six inches in the “20 items or less” lines.
In my experience, Safeway has the slowest, most incompetent cashiers in the business.
However I will give them (and Home Depot) credit for installing self-checkout lanes that actually work at a speed fast enough for not-total-idiots who have to have the process explanation repeated for each and every item.
That’s why you have to READ THE WHOLE THING, my lovelys.
It’s not JUST the cheese he’s talking about ~ it’s the ten layers of bureaucracy that makes getting his cheese home almost not worth the cheese.
I DID read the whole thing, ths. He sounds like every old fart I’ve ever heard yearning for a simpler time. I’ll head home with my cheese while he flusters himself moving from one slow line to the next. You can drag people kicking and screaming into the 21st century but I suppose you can’t make them adapt.
Scott Adams has merely (re-)discovered the law of unintended consequences, doesn’t like it, and will only whine about it.
Now, I agree with Scott on nearly all points. There are two Safeway stores here, one of them a mile or so from my home; they lack self-check out lanes, and have competent cashiers but otherwise meet his description. I especially loathe their high prices and the customer card. Why not just lower the prices overall? (Yeah, I know — they’re tracking customer purchase habits.)
So I stopped using Safeway as my primary vittles center years ago. I still have the card, which is listed under a phone I stopped using 10 years ago. I’ll hit Safeway for small things, or when I’m in another city. I use the customer card …… and smile.
(Actually, I have TWO grocery store customer cards; the other one is for Albertson’s, which is a decent enough store. But that card has a bogus phone number assigned to it.)
Instead, I frequent a regional grocery store down the road a bit, not too far away. And, on occasion, stock up at CostCo and WinCo in another city. I may not get the high end name brands people think they need,
In short, I try to shop smart. Scott Adams does not. He wants convenience on demand, and expects the major corporations to give it him because for whatever reason. This sounds like he made an impulse purchase, got cranky, and vented on-line. He’s channeling Dilbert too much. He’s better off emulating Wally.
Meh, never much cared for Safeway & wasn’t upset when they skedaddled out of Texas (they were killed by their unions but they didn’t have to sign the contracts).
But yeah, the whole let’s keep the customers confused so they wander all over the store and maybe buy something else bit is tiresome.
And I’ll be d—-d if I’m going to use self-checkout if they’re not going to give me a discount for saving them money.
Resistance is futile, aelfheld. You’ll use a self-checkout someday … because that’s all there will be at some places. 🙂
I’m with aelfheld: “And I’ll be d—-d if I’m going to use self-checkout if they’re not going to give me a discount for saving them money.”
We don’t have Safeways hereabouts, but the (gasp) Walmarts have them. I have used them, and called for help often enough to get someone over to…erm…do it for me. 😀
Really – gas is one thing, groceries is another – especially when the oh so smart self checkout aisles are exactly as Scott described.