We need to also test your ability to spend money. I swear people at self checkout act like they have never used a credit/debit card in there life.
I used to work at this kiosk which was inside a café. A customer wanted to pay from the inside, which can happen, but it’s rare. Since the reader was cable wired to the plug at the window, I had to bring it to where he was standing, but the cable wasn’t long enough. I pulled it out as much as I could, and waited for him to step forward and reach out with his card in his hand.
He was just standing there, waving his card at the machine from ~3-4 feet away. Like, I don’t know, at one point the card reader would go “HEY, that card is Larry! Hi, Larry, how are you doing, you old sonofabitch?”
people lack spacial awareness in the grocery store because a supermarket is an example of hostile design. it is intentionally disorienting and overloads you with information
This is the core problem, right here. At a minimum, people need training to learn what information to ignore so you can navigate the whole thing. Even if you know the store’s layout, you still need to have the will to ignore advertising and disregard extraneous information. Being a fast reader that can do fast mental math, also helps tremendously.
Traffic flow is another problem. Wegmans is the chief offender here, IMO, by putting impulse items in massive crates that crowd the store entrance+exit combo. It amazes me that it’s not a fire hazard, because it makes entering the store a nightmare. But most grocery stores have awful choke points in produce, dairy, meat, and other high-traffic areas. And of course those are the stores that have no small carts or hand-baskets, obligating customers to gum up the works with big metal baskets that are 70% empty.
A better idea is a store that doesn’t flood your eye sockets with information you don’t absolutely need. Get rid of the special displays, end-cap bullshit, and vendor promotional stuff. Then, normalize all the price tags and include unit cost per lb/oz/L/whatever to make bargain hunting a snap. Then, measure the fucking carts and make sure that two can get by everywhere in the store. Finally, pick a store layout and stick to it. </rant>
I want to say that Aldi is already doing all of the right things, but I could be wrong.
Lots of the time it is a fire hazard, but unless the Fire Marshall knows about it nothing gets done.
Fire code is usually checked when the building is built or if there’s a remodel, but otherwise most places can go a long, long time without a fire inspection unless there’s a specific complaint.
Reporting suspected safety issues to the Fire Marshall or Building Official is okay. You’re not being a Karen. Building and Fire codes are written in response to avoidable tragedies and should be followed.
That’s a good call. I kinda/sorta figured that the fire department would see it sooner or later, but that’s clearly not the case.
Fire Marshalls in many places are way too bust for random safety inspections. They’re reviewing plans, inspecting new buildings and remodels, and sometimes also doubling as the city’s arson investigators. And in some jurisdictions they’re also the fire chief.
Aldi is by far my favorite. No nonsense, good prices. You’re in, you’re out. I appreciate they don’t play games.
The only thing that might be a problem is that milk and butter is at the back. But that is actually fine because everyone goes clockwise around the aisles, and there is room to pass, so it flows really easily. You go past all the basics you might need in like a minute.
I always figured milk and butter is at the back to minimize refrigeration loss from the front door opening
Milk and butter is placed in the back of the store to increase the chances you will buy something as you walk by. Every grocery store does this.
Or it makes the most sense logistically based on refrigeration needs and building layout.
Lol, what? I have no issue navigating one. “Overloads you with information”, for fuck’s sake, they’re selling thousands of things.
You really should look into it more (it’s not a secret if you look for it) because OP is right. Yes, they’re selling thousands of things BUT they’re also designing that space to make you take as long as possible to get through it. The answer for why that is, is simple. People buy more. You don’t have to have an “issue” navigating with it, because you just don’t notice if you spend 5 minutes more walking through the place. If it was so egregious to be noticed easily by people, they would stop coming and the benefit evaporates. So it’s a balance.
It’s not even that, grocery stores bake bread and spread bread smell since it perks people up and makes them more willing to spend, play specific music that calms and soothes you so you’ll walk slower. When you walk into a grocery store, you are walking through a highly specialized environment to maximize profits.
they’re also designing that space to make you take as long as possible to get through it
I get eggs, meat, veggies, and a few things from the mexican food section. When I don’t immediately know where something is, I ask an employee.
grocery stores bake bread and spread bread smell since it perks people up
I haven’t noticed this in a grocery store for years.
play specific music that calms and soothe
The top 40 from 30-10 years ago?
I’m betting that, yes, at some point the stores thought of all these ideas and talked them up to potential investors or whatever. But then they actually looked into them and found they didn’t replicate, and so they just do whatever now
You are not everyone. It doesnt have to work on everyone to be effective. And at the end if you want to reject it or not, it’s there, you can read up on it if you didnt already make up your mind. For grocery stores, ignoring the science is playing with large sums of money, so they do care.
EDIT: I’ll give you a start: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0950329318302374
spoiler
A possible strategy to increase the bread consumption is to make bread more attractive, for example by using bread aroma. Supermarkets and bakeries have long been using bread aromas to facilitate sales of bread in general. The smell of freshly-baked bread is supposed to guide consumers towards the bread department and increase sales. Even though this kind of use of aromas has to the best of our knowledge not been scientifically tested, other effects of bread aroma such as improving mood have been demonstrated (Zhou, Ohata, & Arihara, 2016). More in general, food aromas have been shown to increase food appetite for congruent products, in terms of both taste and energy density, irrespective of hunger state (Zoon, de Graaf, & Boesveldt, 2016). Food aromas also affected food choice, where for example exposure to citrus aroma reduced selection of cheese (de Wijk & Zijlstra, 2012). Also, aromas have been found to affect behavior in restaurants (Guéguen & Petr, 2006), and shops (de Wijk, Maaskant, Kremer, Holthuysen, & Stijnen, 2017). The reported effects of aromas on food appetite, food choice and behavior in an eating environment motivated the hypothesis that bread aroma may increase bread liking and wanting, and affect choice behavior of bakery products.
Or if you want a video with sources: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qL8pVOe_8zQ
EDIT2: One of the papers also mentions this:
Although the marketing systems and displays within grocery stores were comparable between the United States (US) and Switzerland, the Swiss system was found to exhibit fewer profit-based marketing tactics. Moreover, strategies that are used in Switzerland were found to be less forceful
So you should also take into account that you may simply live in a place that doesn’t push these tactics too hard. But that is irrelevant to if they work or not.
A possible strategy to increase the bread consumption is to make bread more attractive
What a fucking conspiracy, people like fresh bread. This is so fucking stupid.
Is there anything you fucking morons won’t whine about? How do they design the space to do that?
It’s not even that, grocery stores bake bread and spread bread smell since it perks people up and makes them more willing to spend, play specific music that calms and soothes you so you’ll walk slower
Jesus fucking Christ, listen to yourself. Everything is a conspiracy to you goddamn idiots.
What kind of music are they supposed played? Speed metal?
Baking bread on site is a conspiracy? Maybe people like fresh bread, dumbass. Do you think the supermarket is what makes people like fresh bread. You need to seek help, this paranoia is to the point neurological concern.
This isn’t a conspiracy, nor a secret, and nobody is claiming it is. It’s just psychology for the sake of profit maximization, which literally every company that likes to make a profit participates in. Why are you winding yourself up so much over something so uncontroversial?
You should go work in retail for a year or two, because then you will know this isn’t exactly uncommon knowledge and even the people stocking the shelves know about it. Hell people that understand psychology need to shop too, so they know it too as they move through the store. If it’s a conspiracy to you, that says more about you than anybody else.
Just try find and track the price per kg of a good, and you are in deep shit. Its some times hidden, after several “get the app”, “two for one” just to find out the good is fucking more expensive if you refuse go though the privacy invasing hoops. What the fuck happended to “Limited time offer until this actually cheap batch is sold out!”
This must be a regulation in Canada or something because $/100g is always on the bottom for the tag in small print.
It’s almost a straight ass grid. How are you being disoriented lol
Apparently it’s a conspiracy that they play pop music and offer fresh bread on premises.
These people are fucking idiots.
I don’t think you realize who runs grocery stores. Most are just there because they have to be. They just throw it on the shelf and do what they are told.
The people stocking the shelves aren’t the ones designing the store layout, dummy.
Rude. I worked as a grocery manager for 15 years.
Dummy.
did you design the store layout?
Did you? Do you know how most are laid out? Please enlighten me on their “information bombardment”.
A team from corporate designs the general layout, and the layout of most of the shelves, sometimes with help from an outside firm. Occasionally there will be specific shelves or event spaces that don’t have a planogram will be laid out by someone in-store, but this is usually a pretty small percentage of the store.
Sure. But space optimization is also a consideration. You can’t put a 24 pack of water on the top shelf for grandma to pick up. It’s designed with the customer in mind as well.
it’s the who does the telling who creates the hostile design. the other things you’re describing, the dehumanization of the employees, are part of that design
There isn’t anyone saying it’s a hostile design. You don’t know what you are talking about.
One article that I can’t even fully read? Hardly call that evidence. It’s an interesting hypothesis. However in practice impulse buys are not what the discussion was. It is that the entire store is there to “bombard” you. It’s not. It’s categorized and that’s about it. You are thinking of the “sales” area. Which is routinely paid for by vendors.
okay. there’s been research out about the disorienting nature of of grocery stores since the 1970s when piggly wiggly was first normalizing a certain sales area experience.
and yes. i am talking about the sales area. i wae never trying to claim otherwise. the context this entire time was the experience of being a customer inside a building whose only purpose is to extract value from you as you try to acquire basic living necessities.
and impulse buys in that context are a desired outcome of the overwhelming experience.
is your objection just my use of the word bombard? i can use a different word. overstimulate you. better?
like i can find more articles this was just literally the first thing i found and i hoped it would point you in the right direction and help you understand. but reading your comment here it almost feels like you’ve taken such great offense to how i’ve worded this that you can’t be bothered to engage with what i’ve been saying since the start
I think that is not exclusive to grocery stores. Hence why my confusion. Every store from Best Buy to Kohls to Target to Costco to Auto Zone has a sale section for impulse buys.
Every company preys on people’s psychology.
I understand just fine. I just don’t agree it’s aggressive or up to the workers. Including the management. Those directives are extremely high up the food chain in terms of decisions. And from my understanding the vendors pay for their space. They want to make it an impulse for that extra 6 pack or bag of chips.
“15 items or less” lanes should charge extra for going over. 0-20 no charge, 21+ = $1 per extra item (including the 16-20). That money goes towards whoever uses the register after you.
I miss social distancing
I don’t. Not for shopping. I had to wait outside in line, in the freezing cold for an hour, when my state decided to limit the number of customers allowed in at one time. Sucked balls. That didn’t last long, fortunately.
Well, that place sure ain’t fucking Costco, that’s for damned sure.
The most oblivious people on earth gather at Costco, I swear.
I’ve almost never felt this, same with other comments here saying people can’t handle self checkout. Here in Sweden, at least in my city, people behave like you’d expect normal functional adults to behave. The only people who can be an annoyance are groups of kids/teenagers, and it’s very much not all of them either.
Sounds like sweden might have a higher average IQ amongst their population
Maybe they just have less lead in the water and better education.
I mean it’s one banana, Michael.
How much could it cost?
$10?
I know the point of this thread is “ugh, people, man” and it’s not really meant to be engaged with deeper than that, but this is a really bad idea. It would be used to justify racism and ableism and would be a really unpleasant place to be in, too. Karen city, with no one to speak out about it.
Imagine that spike of anxiety at the check-out where you feel rushed because you’re at the front of the line, but instead of it being mostly in your head it’s now a real thing with real consequences. That’s my nightmare
Yeah. In fact, society is full of people who aren’t getting things 100% correct and we just have to be accepting of that. So i don’t like this post.
BUT: the fact that some people don’t get systems like this 100% all the time is proof that we should abolish car dependency and prioritise public safety precautions. [r/FuckCars]
Agreed. Fuck cars and accept that other people aren’t going to be perfect and that that’s okay for them to be.
society is full of people who aren’t getting things 100% correct
It’s fine, they will go to the usual stores.
Separate but equal, eh? Gonna introspect on that, or nah?
Someone in this thread went the extra mile and even called them “the shitty” stores. Which is nice. Brings the warm and cozies, that /s
It would be used to justify racism and ableism
But how?
People walking towards each other on the sidewalk usually subconsciously move out of each other’s ways. But there’s a hierarchy to these interactions that you’re probably only aware of if you’re at the bottom of it. White people tend to resist deferring to people of color. White women will rarely defer to anyone, expecting everyone to get it of their way. People of color will defer to white people, etc, etc.
If you break this subconscious hierarchy, people notice and assume you’re being rude or weird. Like if you move enough out of a white women’s way so that she, too, can move a little out of your way so that you both avoid each other (like equals would do), she might just walk into you. Or cuss you out for being rude. Or when I, a white man, defer to a person of color, it trips them up for a second.
Since this hypothetical grocery store is nothing but “don’t break unspoken rules about rudeness or you get kicked out” it means that a black person would need to act meek and submissive in order to avoid scrutiny and thus be able to stay. Meaning the rules would be more stringent against people of color, thus less people of color would be accepted, thus justifying their usual exclusion.
Ableism is super easy. Since this hypothetical prioritizes convenience over people, if you’re slow at something or need more accommodation, you’d get kicked out.
What a fascinating work of fiction you’ve just created. You should use it to write a really shit short story
Such a great piece of fiction that the phenomenon I just recounted has been lived by real people before
https://www.reddit.com/r/blackladies/comments/1202192/asked_reddit_why_white_people_dont_move_for/
Am… am I god?/s
Because the person in question might be an immigrant from a country where our supermarkets aren’t normal, or have a neurological disease you can’t see.
In that example it’s not racism, i think
Racism isn’t just when a person thinks their race has superior ability. It’s also when we design systems that statistically harm brown people. In my country a lot of racism is thinly veiled as dealing with illegal immigrants. We used to require that you know how to read in order to vote.
Immigrants are not always “brown”.
Nor were all illiterate people.
I love how wanting people to be courteous and respectful of others is racist. I just want people to realize that they’re not alone in the world, and to please move your cart to the side of the goddamn aisle.
Not what I’m fucking saying, but good try. Something being used to justify racism isn’t saying “this is on its face racism” its saying “racists will use the stringent, strict rules of this place to deny people of color access to this space”. All of these complaints are things that everyone does to some extent, you just get frustrated by them when you’re probably already frustrated.
People of color take up more space in white people’s heads, so they get more policing of their behavior even if it isn’t justified. A group of white boys being loud in a grocery store get head shakes and “boys will be boys” comments. A group of black boys being loud in a grocery store get followed around by security and white women clutching their purses.
Also fun how you sidestepped the ableism I brought up in that same sentence. Cause you know there’s no fucking argument there, huh?
I thought both arguments were stupid and so I chose to not continue typing. I guess everything can be used to discriminate against someone, so fuck it, let’s do nothing! Yawn yawn yawn.
Wow, false dichotomy much? I get it, you liked the idea and think me attacking it is like me attacking you. Once you grow up, you’ll realize that not everything is about you.
Sorry, I meant if you grow up.
Not sure why you felt I attacked you, but that’s fine. We’ve obviously got different opinions on the matter, and that’s okay. If it’s because I called the argument stupid, I didn’t mean for that to be a reflection of you, it’s just the exact kind of false dichotomy you’re accusing me of here, and it’s tired and overused here and on Reddit.
You’re really aggressive, man
Yeah, I tend to be perceived that way. I’d rather be seen as aggressive than be a polite asshole
Then shut the fuck up and leave the conversation.
I appreciate your input.
Can you read? He’s talking about enforcing a separate system, not simply “wanting people to be courteous”
Why is Lemmy like this
On an Idiocracy meme in shitposts someone was talking about not supporting eugenics.
Oh my god I’m still stewing over that exact same post. It’s been like a week.
Probably because Idiocracy unintentionally supported eugenics which is a really bad message.
Bruh, I got autism. This person decided to create a hypothetical grocery store instead of just saying “what’s the deal with people in grocery stores? Why are they always in my way?”
You make a hypothetical system as a funny observation, I’m going to shit on the hypothetical before anyone thinks its an actually good idea. Cause people do that shit. Like a whole lot. Check the person who’s trying to defend it as a good idea for an example
Demi Adejuyigbe made a parody of racism in his stand-up special “Demi Adejuyigbe is going to do one (1) back-flip” where he said all Latina women were 6’2" and people started parroting that shit back to him with no introspection on what the fuck they were saying.
Cool, I also have autism. So does like 80% of the users on this network. Ok?
Thanks for the whacky anecdote. That and the original post are bad jokes.
“People can’t drive!”
“What’s the deal with TALL LATIN WOMEN”
They deserve zero attention and this post sucks. I am sorry you had to spend emotional energy on this instead of anything else. You are allowed to downvote and move on too. There’s too much of this garbage engagement bait to take issue with each individual “comedian” on micro blogs or comedy “specials”, or whatever. Including my dumb take comment, btw.
Anyway, eugenics bad.
Cool, I also have autism. So does like 80% of the users on this network. Ok?
Thanks for the whacky anecdote. That and the original post are bad jokes.
“People can’t drive!”
“What’s the deal with TALL LATIN WOMEN”
They deserve zero attention and this post sucks. I am sorry you had to spend emotional energy on this instead of anything else. You are allowed to downvote and move on too. There’s too much of this garbage engagement bait to take issue with each individual “comedian” on micro blogs or comedy “specials”, or whatever. Anyway, eugenics bad.
It would be used to justify racism
The racial trait of being a moron in a grocery store hah
The Karens are part of the problem. They would 100% be in the shitty store after the first trip.
Lol, you think Karens would be kept out of Karen heaven. Lmao, even.
Only if we build similar airports. I understand not everbody is a regular business traveler, but somehow the people in front of me always seem fascinated with the novel concept of flying and airport security, spending 10 minutes emptying the pockets and putting their stuff on the conveyor belt.
Fly out of smaller airports if you can afford it. That’s the differentiator, is cost. Business travelers are (anecdotally) more likely to fly out of the closest and most convenient airport, whereas your regular broke joe (that’s usually me) will absolutely make the 1-2h commute to get myself to a hub airport to save a couple hundred bucks.
Flying and grocery shopping are a bit different on the needs scale, don’t you think? Solid idea application though.
Couldn’t think of a way to go out of business faster than having a competent-customers-only policy.
They would go out of business immediately. Not enough customers.
I’d go daily to hopefully help keep them open.
That + worked any amount of customer service tbh
Could we ban conversation between cart-holders? Two people shopping together, same cart same list, is fine. But anything beyond “Hi, nice to see you” between two carts clogs the aisles
Put lines on the floor like m’roads
I remember when we did that during COVID. I wish it stuck.
I mean roadway markings. Put turn signals on the carts. It’ll just highlight the inept.
instructions unclear we are all now blind thanks to lifted shipping carts with trail lights that the grocery cops will do nothing about
Where beans? Where corn?
m’roads
*tips fedora*
People seem to get tunnel vision in the grocery store and ignore the dozens of people trying to move around them. I weave in and out of those groups of people quickly and try to mumble “asshole” just loud enough they can hear me as i walk by.
