They’re at it again. The supermarket madmen are on the loose once more.
Every six months or so the moguls at the market decide to change things. Seeing through their eyes in the ceiling that the customers are content and pleased to discover the aspirin is near to the bandages and that the milk is close to the cream, they change everything around.
Now no longer are the pretzles near the potato chips but they have been moved to the soup aisle. Why? Shut up.
It is said that supermarket shelves are the result of the most careful science and planning, that popular items are at eye-level, that there is a plan. It is a lie. They change it only to drive us crazy.
Why are the brussels sprouts and french fries and english muffins not together in the “international food” aisle? Because that would make sense. Why is the apple sauce apart from the apples and the pineapples? Because that’s what they want to do and, not to worry, it’ll change in a few weeks anyway. There is a special supermarket task force in place to hide things and the change their resting place once the chump customers get comfortable knowing where to turn for the tin foil.
My Walbaum’s is in its annual upheavel. Nothing is where it was yesterday. There is no logic to the change — the oranges migrate to the west, the donuts roll away to the north. Shoe polish somehow finds itself with the lightbulbs while sugar and spice and everything nice is mixed in with snips and snails and puppydog tails.
And at the end of it, what do you have? You have totally befuddled customers and smirky stock clerks alone on the planet earth knowing where anything is.
Power, that’s what men dream of.
2 Comments
July 9, 2007 at 1:20 am
The expertise of supermarketing is this:
Go to Walmart once a month for the grand supply trip, and in between get the minimum needed from the locals.
Never use coupons, since they get you to buy stuff you really don’t want or need.
Never look at supermarket ads, but rather, stock up on whatever is on sale.
Always have plenty of canned goods in case of a hurricane. Recycle your stocks as needed, as they do in the supermarkets.
If you don’t have root cellar (canned supplies stored in the cool basement), get one. This is essential, especially if the kooks in the White House decide to have an epidemic for the good times of Martial Law.
Store, also, some sort of gasoline for the generator, and every home should have a generator, not only to save your lives if we have a wicked storm in the winter, but to off-set the cost of replaced plumbing, should everything freeze.
Never to worry about supermarket confusion again, eh?
Kathleen-
ENERGY & EFFICIENCY SPECIALIST,
Analytical Chemist,
Formally trained in “ENERGY AND WASTE MANAGEMENT” (A college physics course)
‘Pretty sick and tired from Lyme disease, so having this THERMODYNAMICS and CHEMISTRY background was, well, efficient of me, since I later got Lyme.
http://www.actionlyme.org
July 9, 2007 at 6:49 am
Good tips, Kathleen. But I worry about shopping for sales. I buy 200 pounds of lima beans because they’e 10 percent off — and I hate lima beans. I have cans of shoe polish, 30 percent less, and have no money left for shoes. I only use coupons for what I would get otherwise — except when one doubles on the lima beans
denis