Know What Bugs Me? Rearranged Grocery Shelves

I get annoyed when without warning the grocers completely rearrange their stock. I’m convinced they have monthly meetings to prepare for this heist. They sneak in late at night, managers with their megaphones, clerks with sleepy eyes. They roll up their sleeves and set to work disturbing our ordered lives. The result: the Diet Cokes are moved from aisle eight to who knows where. Peanut butter is missing from row fourteen and so it goes. Nothing is where it should be.

Why all this rearranging? I’ve asked and never gotten a clear answer. It’s a huge secret, but my guess is that they want us to see new products that now sit on shelves where our favorite coffee or pasta sat before. I wish I could make them believe it doesn’t work. I want what I want. Most shoppers do. For us, grocery shopping is a job to be completed in as little time as possible.

What stores need to do once a month is have an Adventurous Shoppers Day, a time to push all those items I never look at. These customers approach new and unusual products as though the store is one big wonderland ready to be explored. They stop to examine all kinds of items while other shoppers fill their carts with things on their list. These grocery store explorers stand in amazement with a bag of dry nuggets that claim to be part pizza, part pretzel. Mmm! Who doesn’t like a dried out, cold, crunchy pizza? They examine the bottles of walnut oil. I’m sure it has a purpose, but I’ve cooked for years without it so I’ll pass on that one. They stop and stare at the frozen sweet potato patties. A hit at any family gathering. Right?

At the end of the Adventurous Shoppers Day, the store would be cleared of what I call, funny food, stuff I have never eaten and don’t want to try. At home, their families would push it to the farthest corner of the pantry or freezer, never to be seen again.

So grocers, stop making our lives harder by changing the location of your stock. We know where everything is, we know just what we want, and we don’t want it messed with. Now - let’s talk about the problems at check out.