10h ago

I walked all over the damn store looking for butter

I finally caved and had to ask.

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Corporate metric improved: people spend more time in our stores now!
- thats how CEOs define their rules when their then-by-them-damaged company has to pay them a huge bonus for causing permanent damages to the company 🤷

A supermarket I go to sometimes around a year ago decided to "reorganize" everything. The first day I went there after the reorganization I almost suffered a meltdown. You know where they put the biscuits and cookies?
You guessed it! In the same aisle than stationery and printer ink. I am not kidding, the psychopath who did this, for some reason decided that printer ink was somehow related to breakfast biscuits.
- They do this shit on purpose. Years ago I worked for the evil empire (Wal-Mart) and they put all the coffee filters next to the coffee makers in the appliance section, not with the coffee in the grocery section or with the consumable paper products. It forces customers to walk around the store to find things. And they would rearrange it every 6 months or so.
  
  When I was but a youth, I met someone and asked where they worked. They, too, said "the evil empire" (meaning Walmart) but I, being naive and having recently discovered Linux, said "Microsoft?" They laughed and responded in the affirmative.
  I believed that for weeks before a Walmart-specific story came up in conversation.
  
  Where I live supermarkets have coffee and smoothie vending machines, so you can have an in-store-coffee while you are buying your groceries. They have it installed to keep you longer in their store, hoping that you buy stuff you didn't need in the first place.
- printer ink was somehow related to breakfast
  For when you want your coffee really, really black.
  
  Unless you're out of blue ink, then you can't print black coffee, even if your black cartridge is full.
- I think it's more plausible that the original fridge had broken down, so butter was relocated to an alternative temporary.
  
  Why would there already be a fridge in the stationary and ink aisle?

Clearly butter is popular with beer drinkers. 2 cases of beer 2 lbs of butter, what a fun night awaits. Slip slidin' away!
- Home improvement stores do the same illogical placement of their goods: If you want to buy a shovel, you would that shovel expect to be located in the aisle with the garden tools, right? Wrong! Of course, it is located in the timber isle, because the handle is made of wood - that's what they probably thought.
  
  that... hasn't been my experience. Gardening shoves are in the gardening section and shovels for wet concrete are next to the bags of concrete.

I like a buttery Chardonnay
- i like the butt'ry biscuit base

I think my head would explode if that happened to me. I'd just start moving it back to the dairy for them while tutting very loud.

Nothing like the old wine/butter aisle
- For the really good nights
- Nothing like the old ~~wine/butter~~ French Cuisine aisle

At least you know it's somewhere in the fridge section, yah?
But I'm sure everyone has done that while looking for something and it is not cool.
- Problem is, there were like 8 different refrigerated sections. Milks and juices. Dairy, including cheeses and yogurts (which is where I was fully expecting it to be and which I went back to multiple times). Meats. Desserts and puddings. Salsas, dips and such. And several others. I think I just walked by the alcohol aisle repeatedly thinking, "Well, I know it's not down that one".
  
  And where was it?
- You'd be surprised. I work at a store with only 2 refrigerated aisles and people still can't figure out where the eggs are. Even though they take up half the aisle and are labeled on the sign above. I swear people don't know how to shop.
  
  Just to add to the confusion, in Germany eggs wouldn't be in the refrigerated aisle.

This is honestly pretty frequent if you shop for anything beyond staple items. Like, pine nuts are not with the other nuts, for example. Cocktail garnishes are not with the other pickles. Canning pectin is not with the jello, etc.
You just can't really trust the signs that much. At least in this case it was an entire visible section and not a single tiny box they hid among a bunch of tangentially related items.
- Canning pectin is with the canning jars!
  Now, where those are is extremely confusing. Currently I think it's near the sugars.

I wish grocery stores (especially those you can also order from online) had a page where you could pick the store (if there are multiple) and then search for the thing you need and it had a number label that would be associated with the section it is in. This weird example from op would be: beer 10, butter 10, wine 10 etc without it being confusing because it isn't a category anymore and you only need to look in that section instead of looking like a lost kid running around in the whole store. Also filling up that big sign with just a number would be a lot easier to read from far away.
They can keep the categories if they stick to them, like meat, bread, snacks and so on so ppl who do not care about the number system can still kinda guess like today...
- Some stores do just that. I know I've done it for Target, Walmart, Home Depot, and Lowe's.
  
  Home Depot has their interiors mapped out on Google Maps.
  It's fantastic. Since they did that I'm pretty sure I've never spent more then ten minutes in one unless I wanted to.
  
  Yes, I think other types of stores are better at it. But the stores that are only groceries, are there any that use that?
- I saw it a bit late, they actually have a number assigned to the sign. Do they use a number system already? Who is it for?
  
  I think it's just so an employee can say "that's in aisle 7" without having to walk you there.

If looked at in a certain way butter is a chilled beverage.

Ahh yes, beer and butter, classic pairing
Also the butter in the photo seem so big, huge, kilos of butter per package!
- The real butter is in the case with the Kerrygold. American Butter (I see Clover, Land o' Lakes, and Challenge, for example) is typically sold in one-pound boxes of four 8-tablespoon sticks. About ½ kilo in all.
  Kerrygold, being more expensive because imported from Ireland, is usually sold as one 8-ounce slab, the equivalent of two sticks.
  What you see in the tubs is either margarine, a mix of butter+oil, or whipped butter (adding air to make it softer , go farther, and seem like more).
- Those large vats are just margarine, so much cheaper than butter.
  
  Thank you for clarifying.
  
  And much less flavour.
- Beer. Butter. Battlestar Galactica.
  
  Beer. Butter. Battlestar Galactica.
  Beerstar Galactica, who hasn't heared of that epos !!!
  
  One more episode. We have time, right?
- Ahh yes, beer and butter, classic pairing
  i once visited a cocktail bar named "buttershaker" in germany, obviously butter is an important ingredient for numerous cocktails too ;-)

At least it wasn't also behind one of those asinine display doors that has a screen on it telling you what might be inside.

shop smart! shop S-Mart!

Man I hate safeway so much

Omg, lol, beer and wine

Does the other side of the sign say the same thing?

Guess I’m built different, I noticed the butter immediately but took 2 minutes to figure out what the problem was before I saw the sign

Well of COURSE the butter is in the Beer & Wine aisle. I mean where ELSE would you expect to find butter? In the DAIRY section? It is to laugh.

I never understood that mentality. Like if I want to know something I google it, I ask. I don't look in an encyclopedia for 20 Mins just to find out I'm in the wrong book.
- You google what aisle the butter is in?
  
  Ya but I haven't found it yet, mind sending a link?

61 comments