Walk in, look straight up in the air then whine, “I can’t find anything in this place!” Customer today standing right in front of a full shelf of 2x4x12 stops me and asks where they are. I point to the rack right in front of us. “Well how much do they cost?” I point to the price tag RIGHT IN FRONT OF US! WTF, and it’s more than half of them that do the same shit every day.

It is a good thing you guys don't sell snakes.

Had the same thing happen to me when I worked at Safeway. Standing in front of the dairy case and a customer behind me asked where the milk was.

Some people wouldn't know stupid if it hit them in the face. Asking where milk is in a Safeway is either extremely stupid or lazy.

That being said, I do have a hard time finding things at Costco. I never know if something I've bought before, if it's not where I found it last time, is no longer available or moved to a different location.

While I do know that Costco stores near each other can differentiate their stock so as to not overlap too much, I don't know of a store that has ever done a reset like they do in grocery stores. A reset is where they move entire aisles around based on statistical data conjured up in some mystical Voodoo lounge in the corporate offices. So once you've figure out where stuff is in Costco, it will most likely be in that same spot ten or twenty years later.

quote:

Originally posted by Orguss:
While I do know that Costco stores near each other can differentiate their stock so as to not overlap too much, I don't know of a store that has ever done a reset like they do in grocery stores. A reset is where they move entire aisles around based on statistical data conjured up in some mystical Voodoo lounge in the corporate offices. So once you've figure out where stuff is in Costco, it will most likely be in that same spot ten or twenty years later.

^^^^^^^^ I believe another reason that some of these retailers do this rearanging of up to complete isles is to make the customer have to really look for things and while doing so then maybe making some impulse purchases.......... drill sgt.

quote:

Originally posted by Orguss:

once you've figure out where stuff is in Costco, it will most likely be in that same spot ten or twenty years later.

Nope. Definitely NOT in the Costco location near my house. Some things have "sticky" locations, but many things do not.

Soft drinks have been in many different locations recently. OTC stuff like vitamins and supplements near the pharmacy moves to different aisles frequently. Coffee is a moving target. Snack stuff like nuts, protein bars, etc., gets shuffled around.

Similar items are not always grouped; we like the three-pound packages of Kirkland thick-sliced bacon. Couldn't find it on a recent visit, finally tracked down a Costco dude to ask whether it had been discontinued. Nope, it had been moved to a cooler on an end cap. Silly me, I was looking for it where all of the other bacon was, at the other end of that aisle of coolers.

The gas pumps do tend to stay in the same place.

As the 21st century began, human evolution was at a turning point. Natural selection, the process by which the strongest, the smartest, the fastest, reproduced in greater numbers than the rest, a process which had once favored the noblest traits of man, now began to favor different traits. Most science fiction of the day predicted a future that was more civilized and more intelligent. But as time went on, things seemed to be heading in the opposite direction. A dumbing down. How did this happen? Evolution does not necessarily reward intelligence. With no natural predators to thin the herd, it began to simply reward those who reproduced the most, and left the intelligent to become an endangered species.

A lot of people couldn't pour piss out of a boot if you put the instructions on the heel.

They reset the local Pooblix one we've gone to for over 20 years, took a bit of time to reconfigure the path through the store, Didn't make us buy anything new really, but did piss me off that I had to spend an extra 20 minutes finding stuff that I wanted to buy..

quote:

Originally posted by Prefontaine:
As the 21st century began, human evolution was at a turning point. Natural selection, the process by which the strongest, the smartest, the fastest, reproduced in greater numbers than the rest, a process which had once favored the noblest traits of man, now began to favor different traits. Most science fiction of the day predicted a future that was more civilized and more intelligent. But as time went on, things seemed to be heading in the opposite direction. A dumbing down. How did this happen? Evolution does not necessarily reward intelligence. With no natural predators to thin the herd, it began to simply reward those who reproduced the most, and left the intelligent to become an endangered species.

Just to add on to this, we have more information at our fingertips than ever before, but making that information easier to access, IN MY OPINION, only made people lazier and less intelligent. When was the last time you think a high school aged kid had to go to the library and check out a book to get the information they were looking for?

quote:

Originally posted by Ox190:

When was the last time you think a high school aged kid had to go to the library and check out a book to get the information they were looking for?

Libraries ain't what they used to be. I wanted to look something up. The librarian saw the bewildered expression on my face and asked if she could help.

I told her that I was looking for the card catalog (remember those?) in order to point me to the correct classification in the good old Dewey Decimal System.

Stoopid libraries don't have card catalogs any more. Who knew?

Dumb is everywhere. Bought a small Synology NAS from Amazon a few weeks ago to replace one that a lightning induced power surge got. Received an email from Amazon asking if I could answer a prospective customer’s question. He provided a link to the NAS and wanted to know if it came with drives so I politely pointed out that the term “diskless” in the unit’s title description meant that it doesn’t.

quote:

Originally posted by V-Tail:
Libraries ain't what they used to be.

You're right. Like everything, they've changed with modern technology, mostly for the better.

quote:

The librarian saw the bewildered expression on my face and asked if she could help.

I told her that I was looking for the card catalog (remember those?) in order to point me to the correct classification in the good old Dewey Decimal System.

Stoopid libraries don't have card catalogs any more. Who knew?

And that's not a bad thing. They still have a catalog, it's just in computerized form nowadays. Makes it much quicker and easier to find the book that you're looking for, and much quicker and easier for the library staff to keep track of all their books and add new ones. They also have computerized book check-outs now too, which are hooked into the electronic catalog, which makes inventory control and checkout even simpler and easier these days too.

This also means that libraries can be even larger and more efficient than before.

(Plus, if you really want to blow your mind, you can even check out electronic copies of books from libraries from the comfort of your own home these days and start reading them immediately. You don't even have to drive to the library, walk in, and walk out with a physical copy of a book, and then remember to repeat the process in 2 weeks to return it.)


The old way of doing something isn't necessarily better just because that's how it was "back in the day".

Kinda like how we no longer have to mail dozens of letters just to bitch to each other about how modern libraries suck.

Electronic databases are better—assuming they allow finding things with search terms that are close, and not only exact. I tried to find a book at the Denver public library some 30+ years ago using their electronic card catalog and it told me they didn’t have Barbara Tuchman’s classic about the first world war because I entered “Zimmerman Telegram” rather than “Zimmermann Telegram.” Even not knowing the proper spelling, it would have been easy to find in a card catalog.

When I was a street cop, arrived at a call in uniform, driving a marked police car. As we get out a guy walks up to us and asks "Are you the police?" What gave it away Sherlock?

quote:

Originally posted by Orguss:
Had the same thing happen to me when I worked at Safeway. Standing in front of the dairy case and a customer behind me asked where the milk was.

it seems like a 100 yrs ago, but the first store I worked in , a cashier, who was a bit bitchy, but cute, told a customer when asked where the milk was says,

ma'am,, look right over there, where that great big sign on the wall says MILK,,, betting it's right under it,

quote:

Originally posted by Prefontaine:
As the 21st century began, human evolution was at a turning point. Natural selection, the process by which the strongest, the smartest, the fastest, reproduced in greater numbers than the rest, a process which had once favored the noblest traits of man, now began to favor different traits. Most science fiction of the day predicted a future that was more civilized and more intelligent. But as time went on, things seemed to be heading in the opposite direction. A dumbing down. How did this happen? Evolution does not necessarily reward intelligence. With no natural predators to thin the herd, it began to simply reward those who reproduced the most, and left the intelligent to become an endangered species.

Welcome to Costco, I love you.

quote:

Originally posted by sigfreund:
Electronic databases are better—assuming they allow finding things with search terms that are close, and not only exact. I tried to find a book at the Denver public library some 30+ years ago using their electronic card catalog and it told me they didn’t have Barbara Tuchman’s classic about the first world war because I entered “Zimmerman Telegram” rather than “Zimmermann Telegram.” Even not knowing the proper spelling, it would have been easy to find in a card catalog.

At one point in my software development career, I had to come up with some search capability for finding people by last name.
The problem was the spelling of the name might be inexact.
The DB server we were using had support for soundex.

I used that and the related "difference" functionality to come up with a quick "sounds like" search function.

It was supposed to be temporary, but it has been in use for over 15 years now.
The users could select tighter or looser matching to decrease or increase the number of results.

I am going to dissent. When I was a kid, stores had less stuff. The signs at the ends of the aisle were pretty clear since the amount of “stuff” was fairly basic. Now the average grocery store has a ton of stuff. A jar of spaghetti sauce could be in multiple places. I even found it under international foods once. Really?

They need a touch screen near the aisles to reduce search time. Nothing hate more than when the wife sends me for one specific item. Spoiler, it’s never bread or milk. Lol

As for rude store employees. Fuck them. You work in a fucking grocery store, being annoyed because someone asks where something is in a warehouse sized store is a dick move. If you don’t want to answer those questions get a different job. Maybe you are the problem.