Shopping Thoughts

Yesterday, I was in Trader Joe’s. While I was looking at prepackaged meats and cheeses, a woman took a packet of Swiss off a rack/hook that held several packages, looked at it, decided she wanted the one behind the first one, and took it from the rack/hook. She then spent less than 10 seconds trying to put the first package back on the hook and just dropped the package onto other meats and cheeses below it and wheeled away.

Next, while I was in the frozen food aisle, I noted a pound of fresh ground beef had been left on top of some frozen fish. I alerted a store employee so it wouldn’t freeze.

Today, in Walgreen’s, I went to buy some razor blades. They were all under lock and key. The woman who got a package of blades out for me told me that until they had locked them up, 10-20 packages would disappear a day. That’s at $22 per package retail. She told me of a nicely-dressed young man she observed putting handfuls of razor blade packages into his shorts pockets and walking around to steal elsewhere in the store. She didn’t want to approach him since “you never know who is carrying a gun.” And he walked out of the store with his stolen goods. She also said that they spend at least an hour each shift putting things back where they belong – the Walgreen’s equivalent of my lady with the cheese or the fresh beef item left on some frozen food.

This doesn’t even scratch the surface of things like drivers in shopping center parking lots. But that’s a whole different rant.