I've been meaning to post on WYFP for quite some time. Today, I've volunteered to host WYFP while JeffW is otherwise engaged. I can only promise to do my best but I'm a newcomer here. Please be gentle.
It's not like I haven't had FPs to share in the past but I just haven't jumped into the pool. In fact, I've had a BFP fomenting for quite a while. Basically, it had to do with Michael Jordan's commercials excoriating the labels in underwear. Remember? <p> What's wrong with LABELS IN UNDERWEAR, I asked. In fact, I think it's only a premise for manufacturers to save a few cents on each pair while the rest of us (in generic undergarments) have to look for the washed-out stamp in the back of our drawers so we don't put them on backwards! And Michael Jordan went along with this charade?! WTF?! What is his FP?! I'll bet he didn't even understand the gravity of the imprimatur he was putting on shoddy skivvie standards!! But I digress.
I have become increasingly concerned (and annoyed) by the newest (in the Bay Area, anyway) "marketing" technique. As my pictures attempt to demonstrate, retailers now fill their aisles with product with no regard for how they impede customer flow. Sometimes they’re on wooden platforms (I call them "skids”...they’re not amused.) loaded with boxes and turned 60° into the aisle.
In most of these stores, two shopping carts cannot pass side-by-side without one "pulling over" to allow the other to pass. This is similarly a problem between shopping cart and walking shoppers. In some stores, one cannot traverse aisles with a shopping cart without going one-way to the end; U-turns are impossible.
I continue to wonder what the Fire Department would think of this approach. If there was an emergency, a single abandoned shopping cart could block a mass evacuation.
If you like to bag your own groceries (in your own reusable bags), they have also made this very difficult as they need to offer product in every available inch of the store.
I spoke to one wholly-self-confident "marketer" at a "99¢" store in my area. lt was "marketing," he told me. "The more we can slow traffic in our store, the more the customer looks around and buys."
Wow. I must really be stupid. Instead, I'm inconvenienced and insulted.
So, What's Your Flagitious Problem tonight? (And don't even begin to tell me it's worse than mine!)