Modern shopping

I was at the supermarket this afternoon and tried to buy some bone in chicken breasts for dinner. I couldn’t find them in the chicken section of the meat department, so I ask the butcher for help. He check where he “knew” they should be but decided that they must have sold out and another product filled into the empty slot.

I commented that if there were a position holder for the item, I would have know they were sold out and not had to bother him. He agreed and replied that they used to be able to make the decisions about how much of what to stock and how to mark the bins in the store, but that now it was done from a central office.

I may not like the answer, but I’ll continue to shop their because at least I got an honest answer not a song and dance. Keep in mind that this is a store that thinks it’s my job to fill in their paper work for an item I’d like them to keep selling. A product that I regularly buy from them. I did my part as a customer when I told a store employee! Putting that into their system is the stores job, not mine.

The store thinks that they are saving money for the employee’s time and they are, by shifting that cost for time from their employee to me. My time to fill out their card is worth at least as much as their employees and since the profit from selling me the product accrues to them, why should they shift the cost to me?