For Us Thanksgiving Was Over Before You Carved Your Turkey – Another Thanksgiving Adventure With Uzi

For most of us that work in the Uzi family grocery stores our Thanksgiving is over before you the reader of this blog even begin yours. Upon reflection I believe most of us will agree that Uzi was even more weird this Thanksgiving than he has ever been in the past. Some of this was the result of the new technology that Uzi is using to run his crumbling empire while the rest of the weirdness is probably the result of the need to increase the dosage of something that he is taking.

If most of you have not figured it out yet this blog is an outlet for not only myself but also  some of my fellow patients at the Uzi family grocery store chain and mental health clinic. In essence we hate this particular holiday yet like abused spouses we keep coming back for more. Why is that? Who cares?

Thanksgiving you see is the most important holiday for retail food stores everywhere. Some industry experts say that a typical supermarket will do 20% of its annual sales from the week or so before Thanksgiving to the end of December. So you see for the Uzi family it is the time of year that the cash register rings really loud and often which means that all of the Uzi family pigs come to the trough to fatten up. There are more trips around the world to take, more clubs to join and more money to salt away from watching eyes.

To show our readers that we are a blog that keeps up on current events let us tell you that Uzi and one of his brother-in-laws keep all of us up to date on the economic morass that the world finds itself in. As we were all giving it 110% in the stores and had been working the 24 – 7 schedule for weeks both of them let us know just how bad things were “out there” and how President Obama’s new health care plan had so many hidden costs that things were not looking like they were getting better – at least for us workers read no raises again and no bonuses. Yep here we were giving it our all, thanking the customers, stocking the shelves, being shouted at by the customers, working in filthy conditions with equipment that should have been junked decades ago and they told us how bleak it was out there. Such an inspiring management style they have. Actually they have the social and management graces of an impacted wisdom tooth.

It goes without saying that when the average consumer thinks about their Thanksgiving holiday dinner the image posted above comes to mind. For the older/ancient readers of this blog perhaps something out of a Norman Rockwell painting is in your mind and for the younger readers something that one might see on the Food Network. Yes it is a grand time to eat well, get together with friends and family to gorge ourselves on good food while listening to some of the bizarre things that come out of each others mouths around the dinner table.

For the person responsible for making this meal happen the effort necessary to pull off a successful holiday celebration begins sometimes weeks ahead of time or at least a few days before Thanksgiving. These modern-day Martha Stewarts, Paula Deans and Rachel Rays usually begin by planning the head count and dishes to be served. Then it was off to the grocery store for these holiday warriors to gather the provisions that they need feed the hordes.

First on the list is the main course and in most cases this is a turkey. The ongoing debate has been whether to procure a fresh turkey or a frozen one. Yes some just prefer a turkey breast however after a Thanksgiving working for the Uzi family I myself prefer a Stouffers microwave dinner with a Valium chaser.

So today the decision as to whether to select a fresh or frozen turkey rests more on the cost per pound of the bird and/or what kind of promotions your regular supermarket is having on turkeys. For many years now the turkey has been a loss leader for stores meaning that they will give the turkey away for cost or below cost in order for the consumer to purchase all of the other ‘fixin’s’ at their store. Some stores would give you a turkey free if you purchased so much in groceries over the weeks preceding Thanksgiving while others retailers would offer special prices on the bird for their bonus card saving customers.

Oh yes back to the fresh or frozen turkey discussion. Well if the consumer knew how long that frozen turkey has been frozen they might think twice about getting one but today it comes down to price. Yes the American consumer wants it cheaper than ever especially if they work for someone like a Uzi since they do not have that much money for food.

For the most part fresh does mean fresh although I do know of one large poultry supplier that flash freezes their freshly killed turkeys so that it has a little frost on it but all in all they are fresh.

I often wonder how these poultry farms can sell us a fresh turkey at 99 cents to 2 something a pound and make money on it. What with the cost of feed, veterinarian expenses, transportation, processing, packing, marketing and what not it seems like not a big money-maker but year after year they do it.

There are some consumers that today have neither the time or inclination to cook a turkey so they buy packaged turkey dinners from their supermarket. Safeway, Stop and Shop, Whole Foods/Whole Paycheck and others sell these meals pre-cooked and in a box complete with side dishes, rolls and pies for prices that range from $50 to hundreds of dollars. The late gonzo journalist Hunter S Thompson once wrote that the “Kentucky Derby is Decadent and Depraved” while I submit to you the readers that any consumer that goes for one of these boxed holiday dinners is lazy and mental as well while also having no taste.

For the most part the supermarket chains do not bring in thousands of gourmet chefs the week of Thanksgiving to prepare that special meal for you their valued customer no they buy the dinners and sides already prepared and throw them in a box. The bigger the chain the less of a chance that it is store made. As a matter of fact the Uzi family of stores/mental health clinics is relatively small in number and they do not prepare one damn thing that goes in the box. The turkeys come in pre-cooked, the side dishes are in microwaveable containers, the pies were frozen and rolls were heated up.

For the love of god people you can not take a turkey home, spread some butter on it and throw it in the oven until the plastic pop-up shoots out to say that it is done? It is supposed to be that time of year for friends and dysfunctional family members to gather round and enjoy the moment.

Well Uzi has communicated to all of us inmates that we did a great job this year however sales were down but not because of our efforts so the state of morale is just above that of the crew of the Titanic before it sank. Another holiday has come and gone and as the Uzi family settles in to their chairs around the dinner table to gossip about all of the whining employees and how much money they made this Thanksgiving the rest of us will collapse in our beds knowing that we made through it alive.

Happy Thanksgiving from Supermarket Stories.

AB

Copyright @ 2010 Supermarket Stories.

“Give Me Your Tired, Your Poor, Your Huddle Masses” – The Supermarket Industry and it’s History With Immigrants

I do not know if it was all of the noise from the Talking Heads, no not the musical group from the late 70’s and early 80’s, what I am referring to is the shrill from the mouths of today’s news media personalities and the fact that the November 2010 elections have just finished up but I do feel a bit nostalgic if not at least very patriotic today therefore the reason for this particular post. While this years election was basically built up into a referendum on the public’s perception of the current Presidents performance in office for the last two years the national debate over Immigration Reform became lost in the swirls of accusations and other forms of character assassinations except for the occasional rant from a Tea-publican complaining that real Americans speak English.

I for one am so very proud to be working in such a progressively minded industry as the Retail Supermarket Industry.  It was my pride in the Supermarket Industry along with the backdrop of the end of the 2010 election cycle that I was thinking about how my industry has given so much support to so many immigrant groups over the years. Yes I was sitting here envisioning all of our new immigrants arriving in this great land of ours and peering through the free binoculars that the international air carriers have provide them then suddenly each of the passengers see the Statue of Liberty in New York Harbor. With the tears rolling down my cheeks I see that from every window on the plane hundreds of sets of eyes zooming in on that famous plaque at the base of Lady Liberty. I wipe the tears off of my face knowing that these future citizens, or hopefully at least Green Card holders, are reading the lines etched at its base that the poet Emma Lazarus wrote many years ago –  “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free” with the caveat at the end of the plaque that added and owning your own supermarket.

The poet Emma Lazarus was the daughter of a successful family who resided in New York and was of Portuguese-Jewish decent. Her families roots in America go back to before the American Revolution. I kind of imagine that her father and grandfather were grocery store owners operating their business out of the first floor of their homes although they probably were not retailers at all.

Depending on the particular area of the United States that an immigrant to America of the late 19th or early 20th century found themselves in the neighborhood food market or general store of the day was the type of business that opened its arms wide for a group of any hard-working people. It did not matter if they were Italian, German or Russian and it certainly did not matter if they were Christian or Jewish for the opportunities abounded for everyone in the food retailing business who possessed a strong work ethic. Some of the most successful family owned U.S. supermarket chains, pre-multinational mega corporation days, can be traced back to some form of immigrant roots of the late 19th or early 20th century.

Back in the day, so to speak, these immigrant operators of the neighborhood food stores spoke to their fellow immigrants in their native tongues and also made sure that they sold the products that their customers wanted to buy. Most of these old world products were certainly a source of comfort for their immigrant customers who found themselves in a new land, with a new language and somewhat strange unfamiliar things to eat.

A number of  these early immigrant food retailers thrived and became extremely successful. There were some who built up their corner neighborhood store into 30 to 100+ regional supermarket chains by the 1960’s and 1970’s. During the years that these local neighborhood stores became city and state-wide supermarket chains the immigrant founders had become totally assimilated into their adopted country and as such found themselves speaking English like natives and marketing to their mainstream customers of the area that they serve. Today we might see those same early development patterns found in the first generation of immigrant supermarket operators and what is happening today with America’s latest wave of immigrants retailers.

Then in the 1980’s the consolidation bug had bitten the supermarket industry and we saw operators like Safeway, Kroger and even the grand daddy of supermarkets A&P buying up those older immigrant founded regional supermarket chains. Later that same decade with blood still in the water, along with the advent of a true global economy, European retailers like Koninklijke Ahold N.V. (“Ahold”) and Delhaize Group (Euronext Brussels:DELB) (NYSE:DEG) came to the colonies and began to snap up retailers on the East Coast. One after one most of these immigrant founded family supermarket chains began to disappear from the retail landscape.

There was one other event in the 1980’s to hit the U.S. Supermarket Industry like a tsunami rolling over the beach in Thailand and of course this was the massive market share gathering thrust of Wal-Mart. Wal-Mart’s entry into the food retailing business was going to provide opportunities for our latest wave of immigrant grocers something that even the crowd from Bentonville has still not grasped even today. The mega multinationals mentioned in the preceding paragraph trembled with fear as Wal-Mart’s foray into the food retailing business gathered steam however the latest group of immigrants seemed to not give it a second thought. They would find opportunities from the ashes of the closed stores run by earlier immigrant families that Wal-Mart helped close.

The differences between the multi-nationals buying up regional family stores and the entry of Wal-Mart into the food retailing business was the size of their Super Center format stores. The large tracks of land necessary for a Super Center impacted local real estate prices by driving them up yet at the same time it increased the availability of closed smaller store locations after the Borg, if you do not know what is meant by this reference then just keep reading, swept through a community. At this same time Wal-Mart was building 100,000+ square foot sized stores which required huge swaths of land in which to build. Within their “Super Centers” Wal-Mart was dedicating a fair amount of floor space to selling food and non-food products commonly found in the supermarket of day. Slowly this retailing behemoth was choking off their competition in every aspect of food retailing from product cost, labor to the price real estate where a competing store might want to locate.

Well as Wal-Mart and other warehouse format stores got more and more into selling food products a number of smaller food retailers were put out of business. Chain stores saw a loss of market share as well during these turbulent times. In most cases chain stores worked to cut labor costs, reduce services as well as better control inventory costs so as to maintain their profit levels. Some of the chain’s stores however were no longer profitable and decisions were made to close these under performing locations. Smaller locally owned supermarkets and grocery stores that had served their communities for one or two generations began to look hard at their operations and work even harder to stop the hemorrhaging of their profit margins and customer base. More and more of these smaller retail grocery stores began to close their doors as well. It is interesting to note that some of these closed stores were 2nd and 3rd generation immigrant founded businesses. These owners had decided that they could know longer live the American Dream at least as a retail store operator.

It was not just the competition from the mega stores that was contributing to the closing of these smaller family owned retail stores. There were increasing general liability insurance costs, rising health insurance premiums, more government regulations, higher environmental fees, legal fees and growing labor costs that were proportionally higher than their competition. This wave of small business closures had been coming for a long time and the final blow was the competition from the mega stores. Today’s consumer wanted a wide selection of products and always at the lowest price regardless of the size of the store that they shopped in. Let’s not forget that other retailers were eating away at supermarket sales by stocking certain food products along with the variety of non-perishable food products available on the Internet.

Now the retail commercial real estate landscape contained more and more empty store fronts. Most were for lease however Wal-Mart in some cases, along with other larger retailers, would build a new Super Center in another part of a particular town or county and shutter the older one. They would still keep paying the lease on the old location and contractual terms allowed them to do this so as to keep a competitor from moving into the old location. This would contribute to a look of a ghost town in some local communities now that the shoppers were driving a few miles down the road to the new store.

That old saying is that when life gives you lemons then make lemonade is probably the most appropriate way to begin this part of the post. America’s most recent group of immigrants, those that have arrived in the last 25 years or so, seem to know how to make the best of the situation.

Whether they hail from South Asia, the Far East, Latin America or Eastern Europe some of these immigrants have shown that hard work and in some case cultural or language barriers can still go far in America. I might also add that in some metropolitan areas a bit of political correctness on the part of local politicians has also helped these new arrivals succeed in the supermarket business.

While readers can perhaps read in different things to which was written in the previous paragraph the point is that the latest wave of immigrants work hard, tend to stay grounded in business relationships with their fellow immigrants in their own communities or extended families venturing outside of this circle only when they have to. There is a view that local governments seem to bend over backwards to help these new business people get their start and on their feet. What I find ironic is that this type of assistance is what the existing retailers resent so much. A perception of favoritism towards the new immigrant retail supermarket operators is prevalent in a number of communities today.

There are stories in some locals that imply that these new immigrant owned food stores are given breaks by local regulatory agencies who might not seem to enforce the same set of rules that they do at other established food retailers. It has been said that some new immigrant owned food retailers seem to always have managers or employees on duty in the store when local agency staff come around to perform inspections that conveniently do not speak English. To hear some of the municipal inspectors try to tell someone in a store that there is this or that violation with products not being kept under the right storage temperatures and the employee just stare at them with a puzzled look of I do not understand what you are saying. The picture of an agency enforcement representative unable to communicate to the store associate must be priceless especially if the employee really does understand what actually is being said.

You might also have a new immigrant store operator who might say to the refrigeration company representative – what I have to dispose of my old refrigeration coolant because my cooler cases are using EPA outlawed coolant and I need to pay $1,000’s of dollars to a company to do this? Heck no I do not have to because I have a cousin or in-law of mine who does work on the side and said that he can do it for a few hundred dollars. I do not know where he will dispose of the old coolant. Perhaps it will be put in the retailers dumpster or possibly in another retailers dumpster in the same shopping center instead of being disposed of properly. Is my guy going to put the correct EPA coolant that costs so much back in my cooler case? Who knows. What that tile that I want taken up has asbestos in it and I will need to call someone special about it? No I have someone else that can do that job without the need to have a hazardous waste company come in and do it. Of course there are older more established retailers that have probably done the same thing and only worry about it when they get caught.

New immigrant business owners tend to be wary of employing non-fellow immigrant employees possibly just as immigrants did at the turn of the 20th century. There are many other similarities between this generation of immigrant grocers and ones from a hundred years ago.

So have things really changed that much in terms of immigrants owning and operating supermarkets today that did not happen a hundred years ago? Probably not. Are there opportunities for hard-working people with money from their communities or family to own and operate supermarkets? Yes there are. Do the closed store locations left by other retailers offer opportunities to our latest group of immigrants? Yes they do.

A new generation of store owners is living the American Dream here today and is ready to serve the food needs of our most recent wave of immigrants.

God Bless America.

AB

Copyright @ 2010 Supermarket Stories

There Is No Honor Among Thieves

I can remember it like it was just yesterday. “Everyone is stealing from me the suppliers, the employees, the customers and even my family, hell the Rabbi himself would do so if I gave him a chance “. These words have been lodged in the back of mind for years but every now and then something happens to me at work or I remember something that Uzzi said that was spectacularly selfish or ignorant which reaffirms my hope that all bosses are not like him.

It was one of the Apostles, in this case Peter, who vented those fatalistic words to me one day because he had just stumbled upon another incident of a supplier’s employee shorting one of his families stores bread deliveries. “See he said every one of them is a thief” Peter raged on to the point of almost bursting a blood vessel. He was making this statement to me at the same time that he was emptying all of the bills and coins from the soda machine which was out front of one of his families supermarkets. Like some retailers or operators of establishments with vending machines they come to see these things as an opportunity to supplement their already ‘strained’ incomes by putting a little coin in their own pockets. The tactic is simple, as are they, in that one takes product like sodas from their own store and then put these items in the vending machines that are located on the stores premises. Once a week or so the owner, or a trusted employee, will empty, read loot, the vending machine(s) of their money. Later another employee will fill up that same machine with more product. The money that was taken from the vending machine let’s just say probably never gets added to the stores sales for that day. These types of retailers might say that the more vending machines the more tax-free income there is for the family to share in. For some particular reason the word hypocrisy came to mind as I thought about Peter’s rage over the bread vendors delivery shortage on that particular stores order as he looted the vending machines.

When cigarettes used to be sold out of vending machines in stores some unscrupulous retailers considered this the mother lode of tax-free cash. I believe that in some states the price of a pack of cigarettes was over $4 before laws were enacted forcing these machines of death to be removed from the sales floor. However prior to that I remember the Apostle Peter removing over $100 a day from one of these machines. Granted the retailer had to pay the cost of the carton of cigarettes that went into those machines put heck that was just inventory costs on the books so to speak. When you are talking about taking $100 per day of off the books income out of a vending machine then this theft can add up to some serious money – roughly $25,000 per year from one cigarette machine. If the machine was located in a high traffic area then the annual no-tax take could be even higher.

The list can be quite lengthy when it comes to the assortment of vending machines that can generate that oh so loved no-tax income. There are machines that dispense gum, candy and small plastic toys. Have you ever seen one of those claw machines with the mechanical arm that children play to pickup a stuffed toy? Those types of machines might seem ancient compared to the variety found in supermarkets today however the amount of cash that they can take in is still substantial. Now we have postage stamp machines in stores. Have you checked the price on postage stamps lately? There are, in some states, instant lottery scratch off game machines. Video DVD and game rental machines and so much more. Granted the trend in the vending machine industry is to also allow a customer to pay for these purchases with a credit card however the ones that only accept cash are king in some retailers eyes.

Depending on the type of store ownership, independent or chain, of a particular supermarket there are numerous vendors who deliver products to it on a daily or weekly basis. Some supermarket industry statistics suggest that there can be mistakes on anywhere from 10 to 20 percent of these delivered orders. These mistakes can include shortages of products on an order, paperwork or invoiced quantities versus the actual number of products delivered, as well as mistakes in the amount a store is charged for a particular product. In supermarket industry terms we call this shrink. Supermarket shrink is composed of many components and some of these are not related to delivery shortages or overcharges. In fact, like I have stated before, I could write a post just on shrink in the supermarket industry but it is too esoteric of a topic for this post.

At the beginning of this post the Apostle Peter had raged on about the bread vendor who was stealing from one of his families stores, actually like most of the these bellicose blow hearts they married into the business so I guess the relationship is more like a business-in-law, anyway what actually happened is that the delivery driver shorted the store 2 loaves of white bread and 3 loaves of wheat bread on a delivery. Whether the route person made a mistake or was so desperate to feed his family that he needed to steal 5 loaves of bread is beyond the screed that I am writing here on this post. It was a shortage that is for sure and most stores normally have an associate whose responsibility is to verify all incoming deliveries of products. In my years in the supermarket industry I have met delivery people who are thieves as well as some who are in such a hurry to get on to the next stop that they make sloppy mistakes. Does stealing occur at the proverbial back receiving door of a supermarket? Yes it does. That is why there are or should be physical barriers as well as operating procedures to maintain the integrity of the store receiving process from a piece count standpoint. If delivery drivers are constantly coming up short on deliveries than that particular company should be contacted and relief sought from this type of poor customer service. My point here is that if a delivery person is allowed to short a supermarket on a delivery from a product quantity standpoint it is the fault of the store’s staff and possibly its management for not exercising best industry practices during the product receiving process. As someone once said to me locks on things are there to keep honest people honest. The Apostle Peter just did not get it. In his zeal to cut corners and put more money into his own pocket he decided that using standard receiving practices was something that he did not have to follow because after all he was just like Uzzi in that he knew best and everyone was stealing from him.

Did you know that employee theft can also include actions by the owners of the supermarket itself? Yes it can and the argument that it is their company therefore they can do what they want to is an operationally ignorant statement. Lead by example is the point that I wish to convey in this part of the post. As an aside the action of taking product off the shelf with out paying for it also applies to managers at chain owned stores as well – it is wrong. Employees look to their bosses and supervisors for examples on how to behave, in essence they look to see what the standard is in an organization. The argument can be made that businesses, like schools, can not be the parents to young people and there is much credence to that statement. So one can be “old-fashioned” and bury ones head in the sand and say that it is not the supermarkets responsibility to teach things like not to steal to their employees. Yes the parents should have instilled these values to their children at home. However store owners and management can have a more realistic perspective on this issue which is lead by example then discipline as the circumstances demand. Obviously I am directing the thrust of this part of the post to employee theft as it pertains to younger workers. The issue of older workers that steal will not be covered in this post so do not even think of taking me to task for being soft on store theft. In my opinion older employees have been around the block and on the street so to speak and therefore should be terminated in the vast majority of cases. Theft is not acceptable by anyone of any age or demographic group.

So to continue with this post I ask the question what is a younger employee to think when they see a manager or owner simply take something off the shelf and consume it or take it home? The employees know that their store has company policies on theft and consuming unpaid for products at work, usually this is stated in the employee or associates handbook, but this behavior by people in positions of responsibility can send the wrong signal to younger workers. Earlier in this post I regaled the reader with the quote about locks keeping honest people honest so my point here is that by leading by example the correct message is sent to all store associates – no product may be taken unless it is paid for. Managers and owners should never take something from a store shelf without paying for it under any circumstances. The attitude that I own it therefore I can take it makes absolutely no sense in the operation of a retail establishment and if you see this approach used by someone like a Uzzi or Apostle Peter one should not be surprised by the increase in younger employee theft. No I am not condoning any form of theft by younger or older employees.  I am suggesting that everyone should act responsible whenever they are supervising others. Let’s send the right message to all store associates that taking something without paying for it is wrong. As store managers and owners we have responsibilities to ourselves, our employees, our customers and our families.

Back in the day a customer might sample a grape or begin to eat candy out of a bag then upon completing their shopping trip they would hand the bag to the cashier who would ring up the item. Well today some of that still goes on except the customer might sample an olive from the olive bar of course they just do that to make sure that the olives are okay – yea right. Perhaps they might sample a piece of fruit or a vegetable from the salad bar. This is part of the nature of food shopping. Sometimes a young child might have taken something off the shelf and put it in their pocket however when the parent found out about it they disciplined the child – hopefully they did anyway.

Unfortunately today there are customers, and I use that term loosely that just flat-out steal things. Some might be labeled as individuals with some sort of personality disorder however they are still thieves. I remember standing in line at a Starbucks in a upper middle income town one day and watched a woman in a fur coat lift a couple of CD’s off of a rack and put them in her purse. When I got to the counter to order I mentioned to the order taker what I had just witnessed and their response was wow she is in here all of the time but we will keep an eye on her now.

In the supermarket industry we see customers steal Health and Beauty products like deodorant, razor blades and shampoos on a regular basis. That is why some of these products are sometimes available for purchase from only behind a customer service counter. Having been through good and bad economic times I know that some people steal from stores no matter what the stock market is doing. Whether the shoplifter has a head full of bad wiring or they just do not know the difference between right and wrong theft is wrong and dealing with it is part of the challenge of doing business with the public.

Where the industry fails on the shoplifting problem is that they do not have a consistent policy on bringing charges against shoplifters or being proactive with law enforcement organizations to deter it. Some retailers take the approach that it is too expensive to prosecute shoplifters. The retailer has to dispatch the employee(s) who were involved with catching the thief to court on the appointed date. When they go to court the case seems to be postponed multiple times. Finally when the offender’s case is prosecuted the sentence is usually very light. Yes the retailer can and usually does ban the shoplifter from returning to their store. Also the industry as a whole employees a database of shoplifters that have been caught in stores that they can share with participating retailers however this service is usually used for pre-employment checks. The main point here is that the shoplifters who are caught are seldom prosecuted and if they are the sentences are relatively light. Can the retailer change the legal system so that the courts take these crimes more seriously? Probably not. However they can let prosecutors know just how serious of a problem that this is in the community and these thefts are not just nuisance crimes to be swept aside. If the local police officer seems indifferent to do something with the shoplifter that has been caught in the store then talk to their supervisor. Call your local community police liaison officer and raise objections to the way your situation was handled. Just like the leading by example that I wrote about earlier in this post supermarket managers and owners have community responsibilities when it comes to store theft as well. While it might seem a frustrating experience to deal with this issue in your community remember that change has to start somewhere. Eventually more in the community will support your efforts.

The general public should know that the industry’s trade associations, FMI and NRF, have lobbied hard to have organized theft rings be a focus of the major law enforcement agencies however what I am referring to here is theft by the single habitual thief who seems to pretty much get away with stealing for a variety of judicial reasons. Improving a stores internal and external anti theft procedures coupled with a fair and equal application of enforcement policies along with a constant effort to make law enforcement professionals support retailers in the community is the best solution available for retailers today.

Sorry no stories of Rabbi’s stealing anything from the local supermarket.

Look for a post on the Apostle Peter’s and Uzzi’s family shopping spree behavior that perpetuate the “it is my store so I will do what I want to do” syndrome sometime in the future right here on the Supermarket Stories blog.

AB

Copyright 2010 @ Supermarket Stories

They Might Want to Film the Next Nat Geo Show at My Supermarket

Please believe me when I say that I have seen more wildlife in the supermarkets that I have either worked in or shopped at than most people might see on a nightly Nat Geo broadcast. There are various reasons why wildlife is more noticeable in today’s supermarket. The readers of this blog should understand that I certainly do not purposely seek out stores to shop at where animals roam freely nor do or did I only work for companies that have bizarre sanitation practices although the Uzzi family stores come pretty close to strange cleaning practices. Perhaps the purpose of this post is that by sharing some of my wildlife experiences with the readers of this blog than together we can hold our local supermarket to a higher level of cleanliness and sanitary conditions that will further ensure the safety of the food that we buy in our stores.

For some reason my recollection of going to the supermarket as s a child was not filled with images of animals and assorted wildlife lurking under counters or shelves to startle and scare me. Nor while I was growing up, some will possibly say that based on this blog I still haven’t,  do I recall running for cover like the crowds did in Hitchcock’s classic film the Birds. Those winged avengers in that film strafed and pecked at the human heads scurrying beneath their glide paths while back then I was just reaching for a box of Frosted Flakes on the shelf and never looked up to see if a bird was circling above me. Surly supermarkets back in the day had the odd attack of fruit flies in the produce department or the lone mouse running under a shelf or case that must have gotten lost on it’s way to Disneyland. No today there is certainly more wildlife in the average supermarket than there used to be perhaps you just have not notice them.

Why is this the case? First of all most supermarkets are not as dutiful about regularly using an exterminator in their stores. It is simply a matter of expense control. No I am not out of mind in stating this is a more common industry practice of treating when there are signs of infestation as opposed to treating to prevent pests. While no store manager wants to be accused of running a dirty or infested store the fact is that chain consolidations and the more prolific role that accountants play in today’s food operation lead to a reduction in store personal who’s duties included cleaning.  The reduction in a store cleaning efforts is another reason as to why more wildlife roam the aisles in our stores. In addition it contributes to more bacteria and assorted germs lurking just beneath the surface so to speak.

In addition another reason as to the rise in the wildlife population in today’s supermarkets is that they contain more “fresh” and prepared foods than they did back in the day. Years ago other than produce or meat items most food came in either a box, tray or container. Convenience was king and the microwave ruled the house.  In the homes of the day the Food Channel was in it’s infancy and chopping one’s own garlic was not a common household practice. The Foodie had not yet begun it’s rise in the food shopping chain. Consumers were beginning to demand more fresh and prepared foods for their shopping carts and these products were made in the supermarket itself thereby making them a more attractive target for our winged and multiple cell pests. While some industry pundits and observers will scoff at these notions of mine the practices in use today in the supermarket industry, both labor expense control as well as the reduction in store operational expenses, lend credence to the arguments presented in this post. It is one of those ugly hidden truths that no one likes to talk about.

Poor Marvin the mouse for he did not even know what he was getting into when he sensed those juicy bread crumbs laying in the tray of that Bread Slicer in the stores bakery department prep area. Every evening when the bakery department workers had gone home Marvin and his friends could play amongst the bakery machines, ovens and product ingredients. They could eat to their hearts content and then snooze through the day coming out the next evening to eat again.

The particular store that Marvin and his buddies lived in offered their bakery department customers a bread slicing service. The bakery department sales racks were filled with whole loafs of Pumpernickel, Rye and other varieties of fresh baked bread. So a customer would just have to hand the bread that they want to buy to the bakery department associate and they would load it into the Bread Slicer and within a minute the customer would be handed a package of sliced bread. To the neo-Foodie this is a great service and for the older customer it is the way that they want to buy their bread.

Well this bread slicing machine has a metal slide out tray at the base of it where the crumbs from the slicing operation fall into. If the bakery department staff was not diligent about cleaning that tray out every day then the crumbs would accumulate in significant quantities, enough to entice Marvin and friends to come get some carbs.

Now if you ever have an opportunity to see one of these commercial bread slicing machines you will immediately notice the rack of sharp cross cut blades about 2 feet long that does the slicing of the bread. When the machine is running it looks like it could mutilate a human limb into 1/2″ sections without a fuss. Well the point that I would like to make is that in order for Marvin and his friends to get at the tasty morsels of bread crumbs they have to run the gauntlet of these sharp blades. It is a tight space to squeeze through even if you are a mouse and the machine is not running at the time.

Since this was an Uzzi family store it meant that the department head as well as the store manager were constantly being squeezed to reduce their payroll expenditures to almost nothing. When line employees are berated constantly about their payroll hours by an Uzzi type manager they tend to do less on the things that are not noticeable like cleaning and focus more on making sure that there is product on the shelf. In this store the amount of bread crumbs in that metal tray was more like a coating on all of the tray surfaces and there was a good build up of crumbs within the machine to get Marvin’s attention.

On one particular evening Marvin worked his way into the metal crumb catch tray however he never got out, at least alive. Marvin died and the metal crumb tray became his short term coffin for he laid in that tray for some period of time. With Marvin’s decomposing body in the crumb tray the slicer continued to be used for slicing customers bread purchases. Finally after weeks had passed an employee noticed a foul smell coming from the bakery department. It took a bit of exploring but Marvin’s body was located and disposed of. The tray was cleaned out – finally, and the slicer continues to be used to this day.

I am willing to say that no more attention is being paid to keeping that bread crumb tray cleaned out today then it was when Marvin lost his life.

If any story about animal life in the supermarket grosses me out the most it would be the time that a store’s meat case had a layer of maggots in the bottom of it. What I mean by the meat case is the refrigerated display case that customers pick the packages of meat out of to purchase. Yes this really did happen in a store and without proper cleaning procedures it will continue to happen. Please believe me that this is not the first time that this type of infestation has occurred in a supermarket.

The store that I am referring to was not an overtly dirty looking store. It was equipped with older refrigerated product cases that had a history of equipment breakdowns well above the industry average. The reason for these breakdowns were due to the overall age of the cases along with the lack of preventative maintenance practices and a poor effort on the stores departmental staff to actually keep them clean. Again like in the case of Marvin’s demise the meat department staff, being one of the highest hourly rate departments in the store, was pressured to keep their payroll costs down so cleaning became more of an after thought.

So packages of meat that were displayed in this particular case left traces of meat product, juices and blood in the lower grate/grill area of the case. With the older case not keeping a cold enough temperature to inhibit this type of bug growth coupled with poor cleaning and sanitation practices by the staff maggots began to thrive in the display case. The bottom of the case was lined with a sheet of vented honeycomb type plastic mesh, like the type found in most supermarkets, which allowed the maggots to nest under this liner. Since the liner was not regularly removed and cleaned under the product that was layered on top of it provided more sustenance for the maggots to thrive on.

Such disgusting sanitary practices from businesses that we buy our food from who sometimes fail to recognize the obligations they have to keep their premises sanitary in order to protect the public’s health should never be tolerated. When these business do not live up to their responsibilities people can get sick. If you as a consumer notice something unsanitary in your local store report it to store management. If nothing is done about it right away do two things. First contact your local health department and lodge a complaint. Second stop shopping at that store because they are endangering your health. Uzzi family type sanitation practices should never be tolerated.

AB

Copyright 2010 @ Supermarket Stories

If I Checkout My Own Groceries Why Am I Not Being Paid or at Least Given a Discount?

Foodie or regular shopper. Shopping solo, with a wing man or you have the whole bloody family with you. Let’s face it by the time you have selected your items, run the gauntlet of the perishable departments and pole vaulted over 2 dozen product displays strategically located in those narrow store aisles you the shopper are ready to get the heck out of the store. Now there is the rub. As you swiftly move across the front of your local supermarket pushing your loaded shopping basket with bad wheels frantically looking for the friendly face of a cashier to take the burden of checking out and bagging your purchases off of you suddenly you realize that there are no friendly faces available. Your choice is to wait in a long line behind other shoppers who have populated the 2 or 3 checkout lanes that are actually staffed at that particular moment in time or check your grocery purchases out yourself. Please note that there are now hybrid alternatives to the self-checkout of your groceries including a scan as you go device however in this post we will stick to the either or choice dilemma for ringing up your groceries.

Some pundits might at this point begin to draw comparisons between the similarities of the history of retail banking ATM’s and self-checkout registers in the supermarket. I will briefly say that yes years ago one had to go into a bank branch to make deposits and make withdrawals. Waiting on-line was the norm however I believe the staffing levels in the banks back then were at a much higher level than let’s say a funeral home information booth at a run for life marathon. ATM’s at first allowed the consumer to have access to the cash in their respective accounts 24 hours a day 7 days a week. Yes this was a win for the consumer. No real heavy lifting here so to speak and no extra charges or fees. As time went by did the banks profit by reducing their branch staffing levels? Yes. Later as the consumers need for cash lessened even the ATM’s began to lose some of its luster in the eyes of the banking consumer. The two situations are different as I will now explain within the balance of this post.

The basic point to be made in defense of the title of this post is that any customer in any supermarket that scans, bags and pays for their supermarket product purchases is saving that supermarket money by reducing the stores labor expenses. Yes a weak case can be made that with the initial capitalized costs of these self-checkout registers, $25 to $60 thousand each, along with their annual operating costs, there is no savings to the store. Again some might suggest that these upfront cost are more expensive than what it would take to staff a regular register with an employee and that the reason that stores deploy self-checkouts is really because of customer service demands. Well let me set everyone straight on the manned register versus self-checkout register expense point. It is my professional opinion, based on years of experience, that the majority of self-checkout register systems in use in today’s supermarket are less expensive to operate than a register manned by an employee. There is no other reason why the industry has embraced these machines except for the fact that it reduces their labor expenses.

Okay point number two. It is a fallacy to believe that supermarket chains, operators and business owners implement self-checkout registers because of the need to provide customer service. Let’s stop for a moment and revisit that last sentence. Now that we have taken a moment to digest this broad claim of mine let’s take a closer look at it.

Once again if we all get into the proverbial time machine and go back to late 1970’s or early 1980’s we would see that most supermarkets and grocery stores did not have cash registers that scanned the bar codes or the UPC codes on products. Yes at that point in time a number of national and local chains had begun rolling out scanning cash register systems in their stores because the use of this technology would certainly reduce the time it took to ring up a customers order which in turn was a good thing for customer service. No one disagreed with this line of thought. One of the downsides in implementing bar code scanning in a supermarket was the upfront capital costs. Outside of the necessary electrical and communications wiring requirements, along with in most cases the checkout stands themselves which had to be replaced as well, a POS or Point of Sale cash register system could run as much as $10,000 per lane not counting the cost of back office support systems, hardware maintenance and weekly information updates. There were additional benefits to the retailer as well what with availability of sales and profitability reports by product and/or department. Detailed sales analysis in the supermarket at store level had finally arrived. Better and more efficient inventory levels were sure to follow, at least some thought so anyway.

Okay so POS scanning systems slowly made their way into most main stream supermarket throughout the 1980’s and early 1990’s. Some more progressive thinking small independent supermarket operators also adopted this product scanning technology early on when the larger chains were implementing it but by the early 1990’s pretty much all supermarkets had either or where in the process of installing these new “computer” type cash register systems in their stores. They market was forcing all retailers to do this because the customer perceived this type of cash register system as a way to check out quickly at the end of their shopping trip saving them valuable time. Once again retailers benefited from this new cash register technology as well. The belief was that a cashier manning a POS scanning cash register could check out more customers per hour than a cashier who rang up each product by price. With less cashiers required to serve the customer at the front of the store than the labor savings achieved there meant more money/profit going to the bottom line. Of course there were many other benefits for a retailer implementing this technology but that discussion could fill a couple of posts on this blog and is not germane to this particular one.

A small side note here back when bar code scanning systems were being implemented in the U.S. supermarket industry labor unions were up in arms about industry management using this new technology. The loss of union jobs was obviously a major reason for their position on challenging the use of these systems for it would lead to lower staffing levels in the store therefore less jobs for their members. Later when self-checkout cash registers began to be implemented in supermarkets there was even less hyperbole emanating from the unions concerning the loss of union jobs because of the reduction in their overall influence in the labor market.

Okay so we can that in bringing bar code scanning cash registers into the supermarket the retail industry had served up improved customer service to their shoppers and at the same time achieved labor savings along with now having access to more detailed inventory/sales reports. To me this sounded like a win-win situation for everyone except organized labor. So now let’s take a closer look at the implementation of self-checkout cash register systems in the U.S. supermarket industry.

Even with the reduction in the presence and strength of organized labor in the U.S. supermarket industry labor costs were one of the three perceived menaces of profitability in the supermarket industry. The others, in no particular order, were the costs of goods or the how much the retailer paid for the products that they sold to their customers. The last threat was the cost of utilities services in a store. As some of you might remember from an earlier posts I believe it was a study by the University of Iowa that stated that 5% of the total consumption of electricity in the U.S. is by supermarkets. At the same time as the implementation of self-checkout cash registers the U.S. supermarket industry was going through a period of consolidation. Larger U.S. national chains were buying up regional supermarket chains. Foreign supermarket chains were buying up U.S. regional chains. Investors were demanding an even higher return on their investments as the technology industry boomed. From a historical standpoint most successful supermarkets of the day averaged a 1.7% net profit margin while the really successful ones averaged 2% or slightly higher of a net profit.

Retail technology vendors began to tease the CEO’s and CFO’s of the supermarket industry by peddling a potential cure for the increasing costs of labor in their checkout operations. This magic pill was the self-checkout cash register system. Just imagine company executives having an employee that never calls in sick, never requires health insurance, works without a break and never asks for a raise they chortled. Remember also that there is no possible way that these mechanical workers will ever ask to join a labor union. Of course these technology vendors had to convince these executives to swallow a tremendously high level of capital expenditures to achieve this labor cost nirvana but they also had a backup plan to get them on board. This plan was to pitch these new mechanical workers as a form of customer service! Yes these devices would be something that customers would be demanding, especially as these retail executives continued to trim the number of workers at the front of their respective operations, so everyone shouted with glee as they drank the Kool Aid.

Obviously I have a certain predisposition to the issue of whether the retail food industry implemented self-checkout cash register systems for labor savings benefits or for customer service reasons – these two reasons are mutually exclusive. As the line in one particular movie went, sorry Kevin Coupe and Mike Sansolo for using the movies for business lesson, “do not piss on my back and tell me that it is raining”.

As a consumer just think of it. You are now ringing up the products that you are purchasing from the store. After ringing them up you are then putting these products in some type of bag that if applicable you will put back in your shopping cart and then take to your vehicle. The first two tasks that were normally done by the supermarket cashier is now being done by the shopper therefore saving the retailer labor costs. If there was a real human ringing up your purchases then there might possibly be an exchange of pleasantries between the two parties along with the potential of a retailer-customer relationship bond being formed. In some cases this bond could contribute to the customer loyalty factor that retailers crave but we will leave this subject on the side of the road for now.

So the point that I am making in the title of this particular post rings true. If I the customer am now doing the work that some employee in a store use to do then why am I not being compensated for my free labor in the form of a discount on my order or a credit on my next one. It is insulting from a customer service standpoint and it is just another example of how businesses today squander marketing and increased sales opportunities by implementing poorly thought out strategies. It is also indicative as to how supermarket retailers view their customers as a whole. Is it a pain to go into a store and do one’s shopping only to find out that there are only a few manned cash registers in which to checkout at? Of course it is. However to be herded over to the self-checkout registers, like lemmings to the sea, is just plain insulting. Worse yet is being told by the retailer that the only reason that they have these type of checkout systems is because that is what we the consumer clamored for. That is simply a lie.

TBC in another Post

AB

Copyright @ 2010 Supermarket Stories

The Theater of Food, Not Yet in 3D – Background and Questions

No blog readers this post is not a review of some avant-garde film that will be shown at the Sundance Film Festival. Rather this is an attempt on my part to bring the various interpretations of this relevant, yet overly hyped, retail food industry buzzword more clearly into focus while also suggesting what it really should mean to shoppers and retailers alike. No Kevin this is not a an attempt to steal yours or Michael’s thunder – for the non-industry reader see further below on this post on what I meant by this when I reference these industry observers, it is to look closer at the attempts to make food shopping more entertaining,

First though let’s define exactly what are the most important aspects of food shopping from the standpoint of today’s consumer and later we will delve into just what the retail food industry defines as the necessary components for their implementation of the Theater of Food marketing concept.

From the mainstream consumers standpoint the first requirement in food shopping is to purchase products that are compatible with their taste and dietary needs and if applicable those of their family, spouses or significant others. The second food shopping requirement, especially in today’s economy, is ability to purchase their food products at a reasonable net price. Now there are a few additional, yet mostly unspoken food shopping requirements, that most consumers have such as the cleanliness of the store that they shop at because after all it is where they are purchasing the food that they and possibly their families will consume – see my post on Nat Geo. Finally today’s mainstream food shopper is also interested in convenience, selection along with a reasonable level of customer service.

If you noticed that in the previous paragraph we used the term “mainstream consumer’s” standpoint to define a particular group of food shoppers. We then identified their requirements as it pertains their choice of retail supermarkets that they will patronize.

Please note that we will now be introducing a different group of food shoppers to this post and they are commonly referred to as the “Foodie”. The Foodie group of shoppers have additional food shopping requirements along with the previously noted ones of the American mainstream food shopper.

It is my position that the Foodie group of shoppers prepare a more eclectic non-traditional type of meal on a regular or semi-regular basis. Perhaps the Foodie group of shoppers are Food Channel viewers or even subscribe to some of the recipe-cooking websites and blogs. The Foodie shopper might also prepare their meals in a HGTV style kitchen or at least equip theirs in a Williams and Sonoma kind of way. While this might seem like a sweeping generalization to some it certainly does define, for the purposes of this post, the Foodie as a type of shopper who has more than a passing interest in food. It should also be noted that a Foodie can also be someone who shops at a store with a significant selection of already prepared foods. This way the “Pseudo Foodie” can eat from a varied menu yet have someone else do the prep work for them – the store.  More on this observation in another post.

The Foodie shopper is very much interested in new food products, emerging food trends, a variety of recipes, content awareness along with ingredients and a slight bias towards organic or natural food products. To a Foodie a trip to the supermarket is not so much a chore but more of a source of pleasure and interest as well as being a creative outlet for them to experience and enjoy. The Foodie is the type of shopper that likes to be entertained when they go to the supermarket and therefore seems to be the main targeted audience for the food industries “Theater of Food” concept or hype, which ever the case may be. Perhaps the food industry is really aiming at the wrong target audience and should focus more on entertaining the mainstream food shopper.

At this point in our post we have identified the two groups of food shoppers that are marketed to in today’s American supermarket while at the same time suggesting that the Foodie group of shoppers are more predisposed to pay admission to the food industries Theater of Food featured showing.

Now let’s continue our discussions by bringing in a non-consumer group of participants and of course this group is made up of the Retail Supermarket Industry along with their associated experts and pundits.

To the best of my knowledge the term Theater of Food was first used back in the mid to late 1980’s. In basic industry speak it is the concept that retail food stores practice to make the shoppers everyday food shopping experience less routine and more interesting thereby creating more profitable sales opportunities for the retailers.

In the 1980’s retail food industry experts, read former managers and executives of retail food or CPG companies, found sanctuary in advisory positions as retail industry consultants. These consultants waxed on poetically about the need to spice up the consumers food shopping experience through the use of visual as well as other sensory oriented marketing ploys. Their sage advice suggested that any costs associated with investing in the implementation of a Theater of Food concept in the supermarkets would be recouped through increased and more profitable product sales.

As a side note I should also mention that in the late 1990’s another group of industry observers joined the fray in touting the need for enhancing the food shopping experience. One particular observer’s credentials include previous writing stints for trade publications.  This industry observer also briefly served as Farah Fawcett’s body guard and today dazzles the food industry lemmings with his opinions with an attitude – his saying not mine, daily postings on his website, serving as a moderator at food industry conferences and self promoting his coauthored book about “Essential Business Lessons from the Movies”. This was the reference that I made at the beginning of this post. Actually if one can simply scan online general and industry news sources and then write a few sentences of commentary about them instead of writing 1,000’s of words from scratch it must be a great gig.

So these industry, consults, pundits and observers recommend that retail supermarkets do the following to enhance the customers food shopping experience therefore making their respective stores a Theater of Food for customers to be entertained in:

1. Change the stores interiors to be more colorful and theatrical. In some cases make their stores reminiscent of old world food markets or little markets within a larger store type layout.

2. Implement Broadway style departmental accent lighting to provide a featured look atmosphere to product displays.

3. Install gleaming bakery ovens and prep tables in areas visible from the sales floor. The thought is that the smell of fresh-baked products wafting throughout the store will entice their customers to put these products into their shopping carts. The store staff should prepare these bakery products in their hospital white colored uniforms as customers passing by watching the action of the bakers. The customer can see the flour gently tossed across a prep table and then a roll of dough is manipulated into a shape destined for one of those gleaming bakery ovens. What theater! Funny growing up I remember smelling bread being baked in my supermarket and it was industry experts of the day back then that said to get rid of this process in the store and centralize this work to save money. What goes around comes around.

4. In the Produce Department the retailer need replace the traditional multi-deck metal produce cases with Vegetable and Fruit style wooden carts reminiscent of a farmers market. Make it seem fresh from the farm so to speak. Cascade the displays of the particular fruits or vegetables over these wooden carts to make the shopper think that they are walking through some produce market in France or Italy. Also they are to make sure that there are 10 – 15 types of peppers on display, fresh looking bunches of ginger, plantains and more and more because this is a performance of produce.

5. The Deli Department should not just have a lot of  lunch meats and cheeses in a glass case with some tuna salad in a bowl for customers to see no progressive retailer, sorry to the trade journal for using this term, rise to the occasion make it seem like the old neighborhood deli of yesteryear. How? First the Deli department should now have a product prep area that looks more like a kitchen in some bright open retro style restaurant. The workers in this department should be attired in more of a gourmet chef style uniform – complete with those huge leg clown looking pants, striped of course. The customer should know that those appealing looking entree’s and side dishes are just as good as the one that they can get down the street at their local bistro along with being quick to warm up and eat.

6. Salad bar you do not need a salad bar no the experts chant what you need to have is a Sushi bar. The store also needs an Olive bar and a Cheese bar. Let’s not forget those appealing looking cauldrons of soup containing your special selections of Curry Chicken and Rice along with organic Broccoli and Cheese amalgamations.

7. Samples, samples and more samples. There should be bowls and trays of products for the customer to try because the experts say that sampling increases sales. No do not worry if you just put a collection of small chunks of cheese on a paper doily with some tooth picks for the customer to clean their teeth with because in the end it is the art of sampling that sells product. Slap it out there without thought as to sanitary conditions or integrating these products with other sales. Nope samples sell and you really do not need a plan to do this. I would like to mention how the Uzzi family stores do sampling. First they will find dated products like cookies and crackers that they will get full credit for the empty box from the supplier for. Next they take a basket that might have been laying around under the cabinets in the office of the store then take a paper towel and pour these stale cookies or crackers into it. Finally put this basket on the counter where everyone can put their hands in to get a sample and there you have it product sampling.

8. Seafood displays should include everything but the salt spray from sea itself. A wide selection of fresh looking fish that just caught the red eye in from the Boston Seafood Market so that they can be displayed in your supermarket is where it is at. Costs? Do not worry about the costs because the experts say that you will recover you costs as a retailer with enough left over to by your that 85 foot Sea Ray cruiser so that you can catch your own fish.

A dose of reality here if you ever find yourself in the Cincinnati Ohio area and are a Foodie then spend a day at Jungle Jim’s International Market in Fairfield Ohio because there you will see a real seafood department and marvel at the extensive effort that Jim went to in bringing the Theater of Food to his customers.

9. A restaurant or cafe area is necessary to have a Theater of Food feel in your store. We are not talking a Big Gulp dispenser and a Hot Dog warming machine no we are talking about a selection of international style foods, drinks – beer and wine would make it even better along with a nice seating area perhaps over looking the sales floor. I do not know about you but buying my food to take home as opposed to eating food at a table in the supermarket just does not make me want to buy more product to take home. I know that the experts can phrase it better than I can here but none the less we must have a area to eat our food in at the supermarket.

10. Wait a minute we almost forgot to mention that a retailer should be offering cooking classes or at least have some bar or high stools that slide right up to the table where Sushi, assorted entree’s or other things are being prepared by the in-store food expert.

So now we have identified the type of shoppers that one might find in their local supermarket, their shopping needs and finally we have heard some of the key ingredients, sorry I had to use that line, necessary to create a Theater of Food from the industry experts. So all that remains in this post is to ask potentially two questions. The first question is does the Theater of Food concept work or not even after 15 years of use in terms of boosting profits and sales in the supermarket? The second question is if the concept worked for the retail food industry does it satisfy the shopping needs of both types of today’s food shoppers? If the answer to this question is no than a followup question is necessary which is what will it take to make this overly hyped concept work for today’s supermarket customer?

The answer to these question will be presented in a future post….

AB

Copyright @ 2010 Supermarket Stories

Ice Hockey and Rugby Players Now in Your Local Supermarket

Nothing lends more credence to the viewpoint that today some people think more about themselves and behave in a seemingly narcissistic manner than by walking the aisles of their local supermarket. One thing that is certain is that manners seem to be something that is left at the front door when some individuals pull a shopping cart out of the row at the front of the store.

I have often wondered if the reason for some of the behavioral traits that I will write about in this post originate in the early days of mankind when we hunted for our own foods – the times of the cave man. Back then we fiercely competed with one another to bring down a wild animal that could fill our stomachs with much-needed sustenance and for the most part we did not want anyone else hording in on our kill. To me these primitive traits are especially prevalent in today’s supermarket meat and deli departments but more on that a little bit later in this post.

So let’s begin now with an example of some of these peculiar shopping habits. Some people use the grocery cart to stalk and capture their prey. Shopping cart etiquette begins when one selects a shopping cart or lasso’s it from the cart corral so to speak. This etiquette ends when you put the cart away at the end of your shopping trip – if you even do that.

First though let’s talk trash. The trash that I would like to talk about here is the type that a previous shopper leaves in a shopping cart for someone else to deal with. In today’s supermarket labor environment there just does not seem to be the resources to keep the shopping carts as clean as they should be and we put our food in these carts. Anyway this type of rude behavior can set the tone for a shoppers food purchase experience and it might not be a pleasant one at that.

I have seen, as well as been a victim of, shopping cart trashing syndrome. Having a store’s paper advertisement laying somewhere in the cart is not the type of trashing that I am referring to. No I am referring to the spilled coffee, empty coffee cups, crumbs from fast food establishments that a previous shopper had left in the cart. Another example is the smashed produce items in a plastic bag that some how got damaged between checking out and being tossed into the family mini van for the trip home. Tomato drippings, banana ooze and apple chunks along with leaking milk or spilled hot soup can make for a slippery shopping cart. One of the most disgusting examples of leaving one’s trash in a shopping cart is the used Kleenex or tissue. This just flat-out makes me want to heave. How can someone wipe their nose or their mouth in something and then leave it in a shopping cart? My favorite instance of extreme shopping cart trashing was when a customer, in a store that I was working at, brought a used diaper to the counter and said that it was left in the shopping cart she was using and could we dispose of it for them. Well at least that it was not a used Depends.

Anyway some people just live like swine and the common courtesy that one should exercise by taking their personal trash from the shopping cart before they push it into the middle of the road or cart corral is for the most part lost on them.

Back to our shopping trip now. With your narrator now in control of their wobbly wheeled shopping cart they begin their journey up and down the aisles of the store doing the hunter gatherer thing.

What I have really begun to fear at my own local grocery store is the Denny Crane like senior citizen, though they might not be carrying a firearm like Denny always seemed to be doing on Boston Legal, some seniors seem to use the shopping cart as their weapon of choice with which to wreak mayhem throughout the store.

Senior citizens seem to be most forceful in the dairy department. Is it their pressing need for yogurt or cottage cheese? Perhaps it is the juices that are commonly found in this department. Whatever the heck it is I can tell you that standing in front of a dairy case for more that 10 seconds can subject a shopper to a body check that would please any member of the audience watching the Montreal Canadians playing the Chicago Blackhawks. My knees have been bumped and checked by numerous 70-year-old seniors on more than several occasions.

While today’s supermarkets do not have yellow lines painted on their floors or traffic signals like roadways do there is an unwritten directional map that 99% of us follow when we are in the supermarket. Most people know that we go in the front door of a store then we follow the crowd around the perimeter of a store as we navigate up and down the center aisles as we go. The senior citizen either does not remember these mental directional maps or chooses to ignore them by claiming some form of mad cow disease.

Last week I was shopping in my local supermarket when I found myself in the dairy department and was immediately mesmerized by a shelf containing 16 or 17 types of yogurt. It took me a few seconds to decide what variety of this custard looking yogurt to take off the shelf when I felt a searing pain shooting up my leg from the area of my knee. As I looked down at my leg I saw that there was a shopping cart attached to my body exactly at knee level. At the handle of that shopping cart was a very prim and properly dressed white-haired lady roughly born about 20 years before Ronald Reagan. Of course she slammed into me from the opposite direction of the store’s normal traffic flow especially for that particular area. This proverbial little old lady stood about 4 foot 8 inches with an obvious calcium deficiency. No wonder I did not see her coming at me since she was short and on the wrong side of the road so to speak. Well she wanted in at the yogurt and nothing was going to stop her for getting to it not even my now wounded knee. There was no excuse me or an apology uttered from her lips instead there was just a self-absorbed look that also said out of my way you jerk.

Have you ever noticed how today’s grocery shopper is forced to confront all of the product displays in the shopping aisles? It used to be that a shopper would see a few of these product displays in the aisles during certain holidays like the aluminum pans around Thanksgiving or perhaps a promotional display from one of the sugar-water producers for a product featuring the image of some hyped up athlete.

Anyway pushing one’s basket up and down the aisles in the store today requires that the shopper dodge more of these numerous product displays that have been placed almost everywhere in the store. I guess these stores get promotional money or pay less for the products in these floor displays but that topic is for another post. In addition to dodging these promotional obstacles a shopper has to be aware that these displays can also be used as a refuge for some shoppers that wish to spring an ambush on their prey so to speak.

A few months back I was making my way through the spice aisle and all of a sudden, from behind a 5+ foot high floor product display for some new sugar substitute my shopping cart was t-boned by another cart even though I was not in the meat department. Apparently some shopper, a short one at that, had pushed their cart to the side of the previously mentioned floor display and was carrying on a conversation on their cell phone.

I do not know what made me more upset the fact that they were able to get phone reception in this store, because I never can, or that they slammed into my cart while they were talking on the phone obviously not looking where they were going or who might be around – kind of like the way some people drive today.

Well after the two of us eyed each other for a moment possibly waiting for the other one to say something the driver of the other shopping cart did not miss a beat with her phone conversation and now was slowly proceeding up the aisle away from me. I was thinking about running after her and demanding her driver’s license and proof of insurance or at least insist that we should exchange our stores valued customer saving card information but it was too late as another customer curtly said “excuse me” because I was now blocking the narrow aisle.

To be continued on another post.

AB

Copyright @ 2010 Supermarket Stories

Strangling Company Communications and He Also Has Spies

The flow of open, two-sided and clear communications between a company’s associates and it’s management is an important underpinning of any functional organization. As I typed in those last few words I realized that in the Uzzi family company there is no such thing as functional so this post might just be non-applicable. None the less the communications between people in an organization is vital to its success and I can not think of anyone who would disagree with this premise – oops I just did think of someone.

Okay Uzzi has got me on that point but I will still continue writing about the importance of good open company communication practices and how the terrible ones stifle an organization in this post. In most organizations communications flow in an open and unobstructed manner. Ideas are exchanged, opinions voiced and other views considered. Feedback is a good thing not something to be scorned at or belittled. In the end a problem is solved, a decision or strategy is arrived at and the organization moves ahead better for the effort. Yes ultimately someone has to make the final decision however by taking advantage of multiple viewpoints and other relevant positions the company wins. In addition the company employees feel part of the decision-making process as well. Seems like a win-win situation to this observer but not to an Uzzi type manager.

When communication between the companies associates are constantly choked off like crab grass sprayed with Round Up then low morale and a general malaise within the company is bound to be prevalent. I must admit that I have never been involved with any type of organization where communication is stifled like it is at the Uzzi family company, very strange indeed.

Uzzi is at best a micro manager and at worse he is a control freak. He must know about and be part of every decision that is going on in a store or the company as a whole no matter how small or trivial that it may seem to others.

Here are some examples of Uzzi communication practices as a manager/owner:

– Why did a store manager tell an employee that they could be scheduled off for a Greek Orthodox holiday 3 weeks in advance? Did the manager do it because the employee is a devout Greek Orthodox? Of course they did but Uzzi sees something dark in a decision like that. Mainly Uzzi wants to know why he wasn’t contacted or consulted on this decision to permit the employee to celebrate this important religious holiday?

– Why did a produce manager decided to put some delicious looking red apple’s in a farmer style basket for a display in their department? Why would the produce staff want to do this? Well to sell more product that is why. No not in a store where Uzzi must be asked for his approval on any merchandising issue.

Uzzi must be in the loop on anything and everything – nothing is to small or petty for him to be the final decision maker on. In addition Uzzi demands, through his caustic mannerism, that no idea can emanate from any associate, read his slaves or minions, within “his” company unless it is his idea. If you say or suggest something than you are automatically wrong or he tells you that you do not know what you are talking about. However later that terrible idea of someone else, his label not mine, will reappear but this time it will come from Uzzi’s lips and it will be put out as a revelation from on high.

These words are not coming from some bitter underling frustrated that they are not getting the credit for their ideas rather they are the plain and simple truth stated by many associates who have experienced the Uzzi ego in action. Some employees just shake their heads or chuckle about his controlling personality – sociopath and or narcissistic who knows which one, but deep down they wonder how someone like this got into a position of ownership of a company. Well the answer to that question will be blogged on in a later post and believe me it is something that happens in a lot in family owned businesses.

As I have said in a past post thank goodness there is a prescription plan in the organization, if the impacted associates get health care insurance at all, although his in-laws have probably not paid the policy premium so the employee will get a bill for their medications later.

Anyway back to our post’s topic of company communications and spies, Uzzi is a master manipulator and a pretty fair judge of whether a person he has just met can be manipulated by his sly although obvious sneaky mind control or not. If you are an easy mark then Uzzi goes to work on you from almost the first time that you meet him. He sizes up how you will fit into his network of informers and what type of information that you can deliver to him. What position do you occupy within the company and therefore what tasty morsels of gossip and innuendo can you bring to him on a regular basis. Will you be the type to call him at home and report that you think so and so did not see to it that the bathrooms were cleaned that evening. Can you rat out a night closing manager for not walking around the store and checking each thermostat on the collection of vintage product cases that the Uzzi family had acquired in the last 5o years but has never updated. Can you squeal on the mentally challenged cart person for sipping a bottle of water by the grocery carts in 100 degree weather when they were on the clock and working outside? Well can you? Uzzi needs to know that you can do these dastardly things while being loyal only to him and no one else including his extended family.

Forget things like working together as a team where everyone communicates with each other to make things run better as well as keeping the dialogue open between all facets of the company. No the communication must come through Uzzi and it must be the tasty stuff please.

Can you feed Uzzi distorted facts and out of context observations about someone who works in a particular store including personal information? Uzzi loves to hear about personal information. This can be used later so that they will do his bidding. Do you posses a low sense of self-esteem so that he can manipulate that personality quirk to serve the greater good – Uzzi’s? This is the power that he possesses like that of a Jedi Knight in a Star Wars movie and how they used their mind control powers on other weaker beings or life forms. Well Uzzi is no Jedi Knight however he is a master at manipulating people to serve him.

Uzzi has placed a vast collection of mostly honest but weak-minded individuals in all of the key locations within his families retail empire. These lemmings report to him on a regular basis and even communicate with each other from location to location within the companies domain hoping that they can rise to the rank of chief spy and informer – Uzzi’s number one spook.

For the most part the Uzzi-grams, as some refer to them as, are worthless idle gossip along with trivial information that can be used for individual attacks on honest and for the most part hard-working company associates. For some reason these victims somehow found themselves on the “Uzzi Black List”. Possible reasons for getting on this list include requesting family health insurance coverage to which they are entitled, going out on disability for a major injury or the worst offense making more than $8 an hour and receiving health benefits! Perhaps they asked for a raise since they had not had one in 6 years. This is not something that you want to ask of Uzzi because it will only get you labeled a non-loyal employee and you will end up on the black list.

Of course some company associates get on the feared Uzzi list just because he feels that they should be on it for some past petty transgression. Uzzi uses his amazing powers of recall to remember how a particular employee failed to stay and work in a store for 14 hours straight during a snow storm because they had to go home and look after their children. Far be it from Uzzi to remember that it had snowed like heck the night before and that this employee basically walked through snow drifts for hours to get to work on time that day. Forget that the employee worked for 12 hours that day when they did get in, on time, and that it would take them another 2 hours to get home that evening. Forget that the employee was scheduled for 8 hours that day and that half of the other employees called out because they could not get through the snow to make it work.  Those things did and do not matter to Uzzi because now this worthless employee is on the black list. Believe it or not this particular example of sub-par employee loyalty could have happened 10 years ago however Uzzi will always remember it especially when an opportunity presents itself for him to get back at that associate. Those of us in the world of reality would probably call this type of behavior vindictive but if you have been with Uzzi for a while you will  just call it normal behavior for him.

Uzzi prides himself in listening to everything that emanates from the family stores and then uses it to his advantage. If a customer mentions that a competitor has a cheaper price on chicken then Uzzi takes that customers word as fact and proceeds to call up the chicken buyer and then berate them for not buying cheaper chickens. The funny thing is that the chicken buyer is his in-law. Uzzi plays no favorites!

So remember that Uzzi does not just use these dogmatic statements from his clan of spies against company associates, he also uses them against his extended family as well. After all Uzzi in Hebrew means my power and in the end that is all that Uzzi cares about – his power.

AB

Copyright @ 2010 Supermarket Stories

Blackberry’s Are Not in the Produce Department and Can You Wait for Just a Minute I Have to Make a Call

Someone recently said that cell or smart phones are not the reason for a perceived increase in rude and ill-mannered behavior by some people in public. The fact of the matter is that these types of people act selfishly and rudely with or without the use of technology. We do not need to use a cell phone to explain why people today exhibit bad manners in public places because behavioral traits like these operate without the need for an electric charger.

Wander through the aisles of your local Supermarket and you will see, what appears at first, to be people talking with themselves. Then upon closer examination one realizes that these people are actually speaking to someone else on their cell phone through some sort of ear piece device. Cell Phones are a handy way for one’s wife, husband, significant other or elderly parent to get in touch with a shopper to ask them to pick up this or that since they are already at the store. If only this were the case in reality.

Listening to people talk on their cell phones in the supermarket can be an insight into our social norms or possibly a case study of conversations at a mental health clinic. For one particular group of shoppers, sorry young ladies, being at the Grocery Store seems to be the time that they can catch up on the gossip of what their fellow girl friends are doing and in some case doing it with. In the case of the busy 30 something male it is a chance to catch up on voice mails from the office or planning for the next sporting event. Every social group that I have observed talking on the cell phone in the Grocery Store have their own particular subject matter that needs to be talked about as they pickup the sodas, chips and frozen food. Why is this? Sociologists I am sure will have an answer and the statistics to back up a study on this type of behavior. Psychologist will have their perspectives on this subject and most of the rest of us will still go around scratching our heads as to why people feel the need to talk about things so loudly on the cell phone in public.

In the interest of full disclosure I own a cell phone or smart phone as they are referred to today. I have never really felt the need to wander through some public place and carry on a conversation with someone else at the same time. Remember though so far I have only been writing about customers using their cell phones in public at the Grocery Store.

So who says that Supermarket employees should be excluded from exercising a little bit of narcissistic tendencies on the job as well. I know for myself that they do so regularly and see it just about everyday or every time I go into a supermarket.

Let’s briefly go off the current subject matter for a moment so that I can provide some background as to why this socially rude and unacceptable behavior of using a Cell Phone at work in the Supermarket has been allowed to grow roots.

Technology is a wonderful thing in most cases. Technology allows for one to be more informed, in touch and have access to the volumes of the accumulated wealth of man. Years ago in many American business, not just the Retail Food industry, computers perpetuated the reduction in numbers of mid-level management positions in an organization. In older businesses the executives would set policies, then area directors would package them for use by the managers who in turn would supervise those policies implementation and adherence to by the line employees. Whether this was a manufacturing, traditional office or service operation mid-level management were the supervisory Bee’s in the business colony.

Technology, namely computers of all different sizes and capabilities, allowed executives to monitor productivity and the operations of a business at all levels. In the interests of cost savings and organizational profitability it was determined that there was too much mid-level management in place. More managing could be done with less management and more technology. Executives could have their finger on the pulse of an organization all of the time. Anyway this change in the organizational thought process worked its way through every industry in the United States even the humble Supermarket Business.

Depending on the size of a particular Grocery Store the organizational structure use to include a store manager, assistant managers, department heads, office personnel, inventory clerks, front-end supervisors, cashiers and perhaps someone to load your purchases into your car. Well to the owners and executives of the Grocery Stores this was just too many people to have on the payroll. Right Uzzi? After all the owners and executives now had the technology to manage every aspect of the business. They did not need someone else interpreting results for them or even carrying out some policy because they could do this themselves or through others further down the organizational chart. In addition the age of hello e-mail good-by personal visits by a mid-level managers was dawning.

So the Supermarket Industry went through an organizational change at store level. First store managers, through the use of technology, could do more to monitor the different areas of their stores. They did not need 3 or 4 assistant managers to help in the running of the store, now they just needed a couple of assistants. The need for multiple department heads was no longer needed either because technology has proven to the owners that the Dairy Department Manager can also be the Frozen Food Manager. Instead of having a pseudo bookkeeper at the store the computer would keep track of things and flag any exceptions which now the store manager must look into first. Front-end Supervisors became more and more extinct in most stores. Instead an office type person can help the cashiers or attend to the odd customer inquiry now and then. Cashiers can be cashiers or Self Checkout Registers can even eliminate the need for the number of cashiers as well – more on this in another post. The store can now reduce their over all store payroll by two to four percent. Considering that a Grocery Store can have a payroll of 7 – 14 percent of its total retail sales the savings are huge. So fewer eyes and more technology was the answer to a store’s profit and service be damned just ask the Holy Grail of retailing Wal-Mart.

So now we can better understand why in some cases no one is watching the proverbial store anymore – other than the closed circuit cameras that are for the most part not being monitored just recorded, the store is on its own as are the customers.

The other day I was in one of the Uzzi Family company stores and I noticed that a cashier, a young man, seemed to be fidgeting with something or with himself while he was waiting on a customer. Of course my thoughts were that perhaps the customer is really a robber and threatening the young cashier. However upon closer observation I saw that the cashier was still checking out or scanning a customers order it was just that the customer was not really putting the products on the check stand with any particular sense of speed. Heck there was not even a rhythm to this process for this customer was just slow putting things on the checkout belt.

This cashier apparently felt that he could use these snippets of 10 or 15 seconds between the groups of products being dug from the customers cart to carry on a Text Messaging conversation with someone who he knew. How’s about that? This cashier certainly practices some type of extreme time management if you ask me.

In the past I had noticed that even at my own local supermarket younger cashiers almost always seemed to have their cell phone or smart phone within close proximity to where they are working. Occasionally I would hear a ring tone similar to a Lady Gaga hit single or some other current R&B or Hip Hop artist going off in the employees pants pockets or purses that were placed under the counter of their workstation. I also noticed that if an opportunity presented itself either after the customer had finished checking out or before the next customer’s order was completely placed on the Checkout Belt that the cashier would reach for the phone and see either who it was that called earlier or what the Text Message said that just came in. There have been times where I have seen the cashier either respond to the Text Message or make a quick phone call before checking out the next customer.

I must be sensitive to this type of behavior now because I see it more and more in the retail stores that I am in. The points that I would like to make here with this post is that rude behavior and poor manners do not need technology to bring it out into the open. If people acting like this today were allowed to do these things and act like this growing up it certainly was something that the parents failed to communicate to their children as to what is acceptable and what is not acceptable forms of behavior. It is not up to the schools or businesses to be surrogate parents and teach their employees not to be rude however the businesses should always provide good examples of proper behavior. However it is up to the schools and the businesses to let their students or employees know what the rules are along with the consequences of not following them. Hello kids do you want fries with that order.

The second point that I would like to make here is that with the lack of supervision in more and more Supermarkets today it is not surprising to see that this type of rude behavior and employee malaise can occur. Store owners and management have an obligation to their customers to provide food products in a clean and sanitary environment with efficient and effect service at a reasonable price. No more and no less. Without proper supervision and periodic associate reviews that include addressing behavioral traits these forms of rude behavior will continue to find fertile ground in the supermarket.

As an aside it is not just the cashiers who are using their cell phones whenever they want to at work it is also the cart person, the meat cutter and the person behind the deli counter. At times I have heard more colorful language emanating from behind the counter from my location on the sales floor than I have heard in some bars.

Quickly to give Uzzi some credit he has a very strict policy on the use of cell phones in a store while an employee is on the company’s time or as he says his time. This policy requires that the employee not use their cell phone when they are working or on the sales floor only when they are on break or leaving for the day. Of course you always see Uzzi when he is in any of the stores with his cell phone at his ear but I guess that he is using it for company business – yea right.

It was only 10 years ago or so that if someone mentioned or used the word Blackberry in a Supermarket one would think of a particular type of fruit berry in the Produce Department. Today one’s first thought is of that famous type of smart phone. Oops I have to run now because I just got a Tweet from Paris Hilton and I want to read it right away.

AB

Copyright @ 2010 Supermarket Stories

Paper or Plastic and the Environment But it is Still About Me

The debate over plastic bags along with local and state governments wanting to remove the option from our shopping trips leaves a lot for one to think about. As a matter of full disclosure I obviously favor paper bags as my choice for carrying my grocery purchases home from the store. I especially like the heavy duty ones with handles.

I do recognize that meat and poultry products leaking through my paper bag would be messy if not dangerous so there is still a need for smaller plastic bags to take care of these situations. My awareness level for food contamination and food borne bacteria has increased over the last five years thanks to the media and the stories about the chance for an animal urinating on the produce products in the fields that I might buy. No leaking trays of chicken juice or bloody packages of ground beef do not even make the sensational headlines on the Fox Noise Channel but it is just gross to look at these things in my shopping cart and think about the possible consequences that they may bring.

A friend of mine would call me anal in my grocery shopping habits for I make my trip through the store with the precision of a military pilot with a GPS unit. First the produce department is shopped with each “fresh” item dutifully entombed in its own small plastic bag. Although some stores need to watch what type of plastic bags they use for these purposes because I have used some that just will not open up after being yanked from the roll. I know that some people have seen me struggle with the bags and then just mumble under my breath that these types of bags are evil. In all fairness they are usually the cheapest ones for a store to buy just ask Uzzi.

After my journey through the produce department I make my way to the dairy department scrutinizing the sell by dates. What I have noticed in my grocery store is that the sell by dates seem to be closer and closer to the current date than ever before. I first noticed this a year ago when this particular supermarket chain had announced a new round of cost cutting moves to boost profitability. Were these two issues related? I do not know the answer but is all I know is that they left my plastic produce bags alone and I can still easily open them at will.

Anyway after a quick trip up a couple of traditional grocery aisles I arrive in the meat department and there I begin to be ecological unsound once again. Every tray or package of “fresh” meat or poultry that goes into my cart is encased like pieces of asbestos having been just removed from the basement of your grandmothers old house. Some packages of meat, like roasts, can not be accommodated by just one of those tear off bags nope sometimes it takes two or three of them to complete the mummification process. On some shopping trips I can not even find one package that is not oozing juice or blood like something out of a True Blood show. I think that I am going to recommend that supermarkets install sink and shower facilities for the customers to use after selecting their meat department purchases.

These department plastic bags can cost between 1/2 and 1 cent for the retailer to buy while the plastic bags for use at the registers can cost 1 cent and more depending on store logo and community message requirements. Paper bags are a couple of cents while the really good ones with the handles costs even more. Of course there are levels of quality and strength within the plastic and paper bag lines but as far as Uzzi is concerned the cheaper the better. As long as the customer get’s out the door with their purchases then it is their problem as he would say. In the mean time he feels that he has to keep the costs down because he is taking his wife and kids to Europe soon and they need the traveling money.

I remember the time that one of the product distributors that calls on the Uzzi Family business mentioned that they had some reusable shopping bags that a CPG, look that term up or follow the hyperlink, company was using to promote a particular line of dinner entres and the Uzzi company could have a couple of boxes of them to give out to their customers. Give out Uzzi must have thought, yea right. Well as Uzzi usually does he got the distributor to provide even more boxes of these FREE reusable shopping bags to Uzzi Family company. I thought to myself wow Uzzi is really a dedicated ecologist or at least more green than I thought he would be capable of being. Of course Alex you were wrong, just dead wrong.

Here was Uzzi’s plan, get as many of the FREE reusable shopping bags as possible and then turnaround and sell them to the Uzzi Supermarket chain customers for what he feels is a discounted price – maybe a buck. Like magic the boxes of FREE reusable shopping bags flowed into the stores and then were put on racks for the customers to buy. When Uzzi ran out of these FREE bags to sell he somehow got more. This went on for a while and I guess that is why some people say that there is money in the green movement it is just that I did not realize that this was one of the ways to do it.

As to reusable shopping bags well I just do not know where I stand on them. These bags do tend to get dirty much less worn after a few months of usage. Depending on the material that they are made out of they get bit funky. Now some customers bring in their reusable shopping bags that are adorned with logos and other chic graphics.

To begin with there are reusable shopping bags like the ones from the local Public Radio fund drive, the charity walk, the Green organizations but then there are the ones from ones personal vacations and upscale retailers. Yes narcissism is alive and well even in the world of reusable shopping bags. Let’s see you have the ones who’s writing on the bags say I have been to the Bahamas or Amsterdam and how about the ones that say Coach or Chanel. How did reusable shopping bags become just another opportunity for someone to be a Label Whore and say that this bag is all about me? Narcissism at it’s best even in the world of ecology.

Sorry I was on another tangent so it is time to return to the main theme of this post. Can you imagine what kind of bacteria and germs are on those reusable shopping bags after a couple of trips to the supermarket? What happens if you do not wrap your meat purchases in plastic bags before putting them into your reusable bag? If you do not put your produce purchases in plastic bags first than to me it means that before you get those peppers or onions home they would have had a chance to leech the dog urine that was applied to your produce products before they were picked at the farm on to the bag itself. That’s right and that Baguette in the thin paper sleeve that you put in that reusable bag gets that same animal urine from the produce products on the bread as well. Yea go ahead and use those reusable bags now – not me.

You can see why I might have issues with reusable bags and now when I am in a grocery store I take a closer look at what type of bags that they are trying to sell to their customers. Some retailers today have ones with that cardboard bottom however the sides are recycled paper and not that strong. Then they put this yarn type string in for handles and want to charge a dollar for those bags along with the stores logo. Some have the true recycled weave style bags with the international symbol for recycling on them. The thing with those type of bags is that what the hell were they recycled from? The ones that I have touched felt like they were made from 6 pack soda rings and old sneakers.

Now back to my shopping trip I usually finish up in the Frozen Food section for some Ice Cream and then it is down the main aisle to the checkout. Where I live now there is no more paper or plastic bags it is just plastic. Whether you get checked out by a cashier or use the infamous Self Checkout Registers – for the life of me I still can not get use to a retailer wanting me to ring up and bag my own purchase but more on that in another post, you get plastic. At my regular store the thickness of the bag has gotten thinner and thinner over the last few years. If you put more that 8 or 9 items in the bag or if you accidentally bump the side of the bag with a straight edge or something then it splits open.

I know that Uzzi is a possessed item in the bag counter type of person. Whenever he is in a store, either his families or a competitors, with laser like focus Uzzi looks and sees how many items a cashier is putting into a plastic bag. Fill it to the max is his philosophy. Oh and no double bagging for Uzzi’s customers so do not even think about asking for them because the family is planning on buying new company cars for themselves and Mercedes, BMW, Infinity and Lexus will not take plastic bags on a trade in. Thank God someone is helping the automobile industry in these trying economic times.

One day a while back I saw Uzzi run after some little old lady that had just left the store because she grabbed a couple, yes a couple of plastic bags from an unmanned checkout stand. He moved out the automatic door like a lion on the hunt and pounced on the elderly lady before she could walk out of the loading zone. While I could not hear the words that were exchanged the facial antics of Uzzi and the utter look of bewilderment on the face of the little old lady was one of those images that I will never forget. As Uzzi returned to the store I watched the lady that procured those couple of extra bags take one out and put her gallon of milk in, I guess to give it extra support for her walk home and the second one she fashioned as an impromptu plastic hat since it was raining very hard that day. I later asked the store manager if he knew that customer who had picked up the two extra plastic bags and he said oh yes she is in here 4 or 5 times a week and buys groceries for herself and a couple of others at the retirement home a mile up the street. He asked me why I wanted to know that and I said never mind. Uzzi really knew how to take customer relations to a new lower level.

Paper or Plastic the choices are less today than they were even a few years ago. Again I want to consider myself ecologically aware but not driven. When cities in California instituted their plastic bag ban the warning shot was sounded but I heard salvation. When the local government in Washington D.C. did the same thing my spirits were raised. I know that at some point in my community I will get my paper bags back and plastic bags will be banned from the supermarket. I am counting the days.

Well I have to dash now and stop to pick up my dry cleaning which will come encased in three very large plastic bags – thank goodness for the Green Movement.

AB

Copyright @ 2010 Supermarket Stories