Safeway, I Declare you WORTHLESS!
My mom shopped at Safeway from my earliest memory. I wandered the aisles only sometimes in a semi panic that I couldn’t find her when sent off to fetch a far flung item. I became convinced that as I walked the end of the aisles peering down each one in turn, she was doing the same and we were perfectly paced so that I could never find her, just barely missing her slip from aisle to aisle. Her keys were my honing device. If I could focus on the familiar jangle, I could find her. I always did.
Safeway was the site of one of our lamest family jokes where when we asked where we came from, my mother said she saw us “on the day old shelf at *SAFEWAY*”.
Are you getting how ingrained Safeway is in my routine? When my dream includes a grocery store, it is Safeway.
No more.
I’ve had it.
The store closest to my house has recently undergone one of those extreme makeover deals where they put down wood floors, delineate a large organic section, and plop in a Starbucks and a bank.
It seemed like a good idea at the time.
Somewhere in the last couple months, I’d noticed that they have all but done away with their baggers. This might not seem like a big deal until you realize that I shop for a LARGE FAMILY and that so do a great many other people. No baggers leaves two options. The cashier can bag everything AFTER doing his real job, which adds excruciating minutes on EACH customer’s time at the register. That means that GOD FORBID there is a line, that line will now take at least twice as long to dissipate. The second option is for the customer to bag them themselves. Now, that might not sound like a big deal, but I’m a FUCKING IDIOT. I can’t bag groceries to save my life. I graduated from college just to insure that my failings as a grocery bagger would never have to be uncovered. Now, I’m screwed. I wasted all that time in school and I am STILL bagging groceries. This is UNACCEPTABLE.
This was enough to push me over the edge, but just one more tidbit happened today that has solidified my need to abandon Safeway.
It’s the in-store Starbucks. Here’s the thing. I’m all for one stop shopping. When the Starbucks in here first opened, I was damn near first, fourth and twentieth in line. They have since cut the staff for it down to one haggard be-valiumed woman who can’t keep pace. She has to work the register AND make all the drinks. Are you catching a theme here? Why employ two people when one can do both jobs just slightly more tediously? Minus triple bonus points for having to wait while she takes the order and makes the drinks for SAFEWAY EMPLOYEES. OH. MY. GOD!!!!!
I’m taking suggestions for a new market to claim as my own.
I like whole foods, but I’m not that freaking granola and I like Lunardi’s. Trader joe’s is awesome, but not for paper goods.
Where do you shop?