Bruh, i just experienced this yesterday. I had my kid with me too, so I was on edge and distracted and couldnt find the goddamn cauliflower
The new Aldi layout at mine is terrible. The vegetables are right at the entrance, which clogs things up because everyone browses vegetables. Plus basically all the regular groceries are in one aisle now, so its all crowded.
This is why I can’t fuck with Trader Joe’s.
I swear Trader Joes does this specifically to make you walk the whole store. It’s small enough that you’re probably walking the whole thing anyway, but I can never just run in and grab what I might need.
We need a standardized grocery store organization system. Like dewey decimal.
Hank Green gave a half joking presentation on this topic
I second this notion
I motion to pass
Aye.
I just don’t understand why the international foods are a separate aisle. Can those sauces not sit next to the other sauces? Can all types of noodles not co-exist in the same aisle? Why can’t masa flour live next to wheat flour?
The more I think about this, the more it annoys me.
There’s a lot of time and money spent analyzing where to put things to maximize customer spending. It’s why milk and eggs are usually at the back of the store, so that you have to walk through the entire store to get them, and you may find something else to buy on the way there. It’s also why “low-interest” items like international foods get put together in their own low-traffic aisle.
That’s also why they rearrange things - not to optimise the layout, but because they hope people will impulse-buy things while looking for the things which have moved
International foods might be “low interest” for many consumers, but for me it’s the most interesting aisle in the supermarket.
Nothing I like more than finding some unusual (to me!) stuff, so I’m happy they put it all in the same place.
As far as price goes, it’s all over. You might find a bottle of Japanese Kewpie mayo for way more than speciality Asian supermarkets ask for, but on the other hand find a huge bag of pistachio nuts for way less money (by volume) than they’re charging for nuts in the ‘regular’ nuts section.
It’s genuinely as if supermarkets know they need to sell this stuff, but haven’t quite worked out what to do with it yet.
The soft drinks and sports drinks used to be right next to each other, now they’re 3 aisles apart. What were they thinking?!
sports drinks are a ‘health food’ now their sales are going up
soft drinks are a ‘bad food’ and their sales are going down
so they must be separated
so they must be separated
Marketing
isn’t struggling to deal with change one of the classic autism traits?
Yeah but also its incredibly normal to get mad when the shop changes layouts. They do it on purpose, creating extra work for the workers, extra time and effort for you, because they’ve pushed some bullshit charts around a table and have scientifically deduced that they can squeeze an extra couple of quid out of you.
Actually infuriating.
Is that something that happens regulary in your place? Here in germany, I’ve only seen it after they renovated or replacex old fridges or something
In Canada, all the fucking time. I find it infuriating. Never more than a year goes by, often less.
That quick in and out isn’t quick anymore.
In the USA there’s studies and such that track how to maximize money from someone shopping. Milk is a well used staple, so it’s always in the fucking back of the store. So you have to go past most everything else to get to it. Then end caps have special, cheap pick up deals for someone who is just here for milk that they may not pass up. Then the checkout the rule is something like $3 and less for items there. Candy, water, soda, everything a kid craves right there to whine and pester the parents about.
yes, usa grocery stores change their layouts once every other year or so. it’s because they think it will increase sales.
mine literally just changed the layout a month ago. it isn’t everything, usually it’s only about 20-30% of the store that moves.
also sometimes it corresponds to the fact they have changed product lines or vendors or marketing. for example years ago my store had an ‘organics’ aisle, and that went away 3 years ago and they just put the organic options next to the regular items instead do having their own distinct aisle. so if you needed one organic bread and one non-organic, you had to go to two different sections of the store.
also many usa stores massively increased floor space to pre-made in-store foods over the past 5 years. most of my stores at least 1/4 - 1/3 of the store is ready to eat items now, because fewer and fewer people want to cook or prepare their own food. there are fewer groceries now.
they’re just pushing more higher margin products. they’ll restock the ‘basics’ more frequently as a result of giving those things less shelf space.
The aging population and those with disabilities is also part of the demand for ready to eat items in addition to those that just don’t have the time anymore because they work two jobs and want something better than fast food.
Garron Noone wrote a song about it. Blame the English cunts.
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It’s also normal to become less accepting of change as you age. I think this has to do with decreasing neural plasticity and the “crystalized” intelligence (accumulation of information) that comes with age even as “fluid” intelligence (processing speed, etc) declines.
Synaptic strengthening happens as you age - you will lose neuronal density, but the neuronal connections you still have are stronger and more efficient. The myelin sheaths around these neurons thicken well into middle age. The distracting neuronal channels, things that didn’t serve you over your years of experience, have died off leaving only the most effective connections.
So, you’re old, you know how stuff is supposed to be. You work well within that framework. When things change, it’s harder for you to keep up with it. It puts your brain under proportionally more load.
So you get mad when the bread aisle moves.
The effect (aversion to change) is similar to autism, but the cause is basically the exact opposite (autistic folk have higher neuronal density, older folks have less than they used to).
In effect, autistic people don’t like when the bread aisle moves because they have to parse that information through a much more complicated and dense web of neuronal connections, which causes overstimulation and increased cognitive load. Old people have to use old dusty disused neurons, which also causes cognitive strain, and not their nice efficient, highly myelinated neurons.
changing the grocery store aisles is annoying because you can’t shop from habit anymore and you have to figure out the new layout. after you adapt by going a few items you forget about it. it’s annoying to go to aisle 4 for bread and then it’s all chips and you have to figure out where they moved the bread, and it’s on the other side of the store.
it has nothing to do with autism. normies get annoyed when they change it, and i was annoyed as a child when they changed it.
it’s been almost a year here, i’m still going down (what my mind thinks is) the ‘correct’ aisle, only to be reminded when i get there that what i’m looking for i literally walked past a minute earlier, five rows back.
My brain rearranges the grocery store shelves just fine. It’s a dystopian adventure every time I go shopping. Maybe I have alcoholic dementia from my drinking days.
I kinda miss grocery stores. Where I stay now there isn’t a single store like that, just many small shops. You get used to things maybe being there, maybe not.
I have ADHD and don’t notice nor remember where the things used to be :^)
Must be frustrating to always search for the items you use every day.
And how TF do I get to the supermarket I’ve been using for 15 years?!
I have AuDHD and I can’t remember a damn thing. Unless it happened 30 years ago, then it’s photographic with built in zoom.
But I tend to build muscle memory about stores I frequent. My Walmart redesigned twice in 6 months. And now I just do Walmart delivery because I can’t deal with how it’s now laid out
They moved my princess auto to a new location… it’s only like 5 min up the road, but all the layouts are different. Fucking shit fuck shit on you for this. I couldn’t have been more angry about something. Can’t find shit. The selection of hydraulics I need is significantly reduced. Everything that is related is now in complete other sections of the damn store.
The tools are usually in the center still, so that’s all I care about. But the outside aisles change depending on store size. I wish they would get rid of the cheap crap nobody buys at the back of the store and expand the important aisles with stuff we do buy.
