this post was submitted on 14 Jan 2026
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people lack spacial awareness in the grocery store because a supermarket is an example of hostile design. it is intentionally disorienting and overloads you with information
Lol, what? I have no issue navigating one. "Overloads you with information", for fuck's sake, they're selling thousands of things.
You really should look into it more (it's not a secret if you look for it) because OP is right. Yes, they're selling thousands of things BUT they're also designing that space to make you take as long as possible to get through it. The answer for why that is, is simple. People buy more. You don't have to have an "issue" navigating with it, because you just don't notice if you spend 5 minutes more walking through the place. If it was so egregious to be noticed easily by people, they would stop coming and the benefit evaporates. So it's a balance.
It's not even that, grocery stores bake bread and spread bread smell since it perks people up and makes them more willing to spend, play specific music that calms and soothes you so you'll walk slower. When you walk into a grocery store, you are walking through a highly specialized environment to maximize profits.
Is there anything you fucking morons won't whine about? How do they design the space to do that?
Jesus fucking Christ, listen to yourself. Everything is a conspiracy to you goddamn idiots.
What kind of music are they supposed played? Speed metal?
Baking bread on site is a conspiracy? Maybe people like fresh bread, dumbass. Do you think the supermarket is what makes people like fresh bread. You need to seek help, this paranoia is to the point neurological concern.
This isn't a conspiracy, nor a secret, and nobody is claiming it is. It's just psychology for the sake of profit maximization, which literally every company that likes to make a profit participates in. Why are you winding yourself up so much over something so uncontroversial?
You should go work in retail for a year or two, because then you will know this isn't exactly uncommon knowledge and even the people stocking the shelves know about it. Hell people that understand psychology need to shop too, so they know it too as they move through the store. If it's a conspiracy to you, that says more about you than anybody else.
I get eggs, meat, veggies, and a few things from the mexican food section. When I don't immediately know where something is, I ask an employee.
I haven't noticed this in a grocery store for years.
The top 40 from 30-10 years ago?
I'm betting that, yes, at some point the stores thought of all these ideas and talked them up to potential investors or whatever. But then they actually looked into them and found they didn't replicate, and so they just do whatever now
You are not everyone. It doesnt have to work on everyone to be effective. And at the end if you want to reject it or not, it's there, you can read up on it if you didnt already make up your mind. For grocery stores, ignoring the science is playing with large sums of money, so they do care.
EDIT: I'll give you a start: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0950329318302374
spoiler
Or if you want a video with sources: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qL8pVOe_8zQ
EDIT2: One of the papers also mentions this:
So you should also take into account that you may simply live in a place that doesn't push these tactics too hard. But that is irrelevant to if they work or not.
What a fucking conspiracy, people like fresh bread. This is so fucking stupid.
This is the core problem, right here. At a minimum, people need training to learn what information to ignore so you can navigate the whole thing. Even if you know the store's layout, you still need to have the will to ignore advertising and disregard extraneous information. Being a fast reader that can do fast mental math, also helps tremendously.
Traffic flow is another problem. Wegmans is the chief offender here, IMO, by putting impulse items in massive crates that crowd the store entrance+exit combo. It amazes me that it's not a fire hazard, because it makes entering the store a nightmare. But most grocery stores have awful choke points in produce, dairy, meat, and other high-traffic areas. And of course those are the stores that have no small carts or hand-baskets, obligating customers to gum up the works with big metal baskets that are 70% empty.
A better idea is a store that doesn't flood your eye sockets with information you don't absolutely need. Get rid of the special displays, end-cap bullshit, and vendor promotional stuff. Then, normalize all the price tags and include unit cost per lb/oz/L/whatever to make bargain hunting a snap. Then, measure the fucking carts and make sure that two can get by everywhere in the store. Finally, pick a store layout and stick to it.
I want to say that Aldi is already doing all of the right things, but I could be wrong.
Aldi is by far my favorite. No nonsense, good prices. You're in, you're out. I appreciate they don't play games.
The only thing that might be a problem is that milk and butter is at the back. But that is actually fine because everyone goes clockwise around the aisles, and there is room to pass, so it flows really easily. You go past all the basics you might need in like a minute.
I always figured milk and butter is at the back to minimize refrigeration loss from the front door opening
Milk and butter is placed in the back of the store to increase the chances you will buy something as you walk by. Every grocery store does this.
Or it makes the most sense logistically based on refrigeration needs and building layout.
that's one reason, the other is that the large display coolers where those items are often located are just a wall of a large walk-in where other stock not on display is stored. those are along a side of the building, and the back wall is nearest the loading docks (usually) so those items can be rolled right from the incoming trucks to the cooler easily.
Lots of the time it is a fire hazard, but unless the Fire Marshall knows about it nothing gets done.
Fire code is usually checked when the building is built or if there's a remodel, but otherwise most places can go a long, long time without a fire inspection unless there's a specific complaint.
Reporting suspected safety issues to the Fire Marshall or Building Official is okay. You're not being a Karen. Building and Fire codes are written in response to avoidable tragedies and should be followed.
That's a good call. I kinda/sorta figured that the fire department would see it sooner or later, but that's clearly not the case.
Fire Marshalls in many places are way too bust for random safety inspections. They're reviewing plans, inspecting new buildings and remodels, and sometimes also doubling as the city's arson investigators. And in some jurisdictions they're also the fire chief.
Fucking Weggels... [what we call it at work] Those stores are laid out like some kid did a drawing and used AI to make a store out of it.
I need some gluten free crackers for my sister in law for Christmas, are they in the cracker isle, the gluten free isle, the cheese section? Two stores near me don't even place them in the same location.
Ohh glass bottles of water! Let's recycle! They're in bulk this week, next week they're in the water isle, next week the fancy drink isle.
The fucking floor displays in aisles that create chokepoints, and then aisles that have a bunch of popular shit all together creating a traffic jam. And don't get me started on the lack of manned checkout lines anymore. Self-checkout is adequate as express lanes (i.e. limited number of items, limited produce, no alcohol) but sucks if you are buying more.
I try to go later in the evening to avoid the rush.
The most annoying thing about the self checkout is the need for you to put the entirety of your shopping on the time you weighing plate to make sure that I'm not buying my weekly shop but then sneaking a bottle of water past the system.
At least the IKEA self checkouts don't do that. They let me buy my Pœlēøïng in peace
They let you buy your what? I promise I tried to look it up, but I had no search results.
I have 5 dollars on it being some kind of dresser!
It's IKEA so like 90% of their product it's probably a random small table for some reason everybody seems to need.
It's a cooking method
I'm still confused. If it's a method, how is it something you buy at Ikea? Is it a food?
I'm not sure. It's a method of cooking meat in it's own juices. So he might be trying to refer to the meatballs?
i also bring my own shopping bags. the grocery store here (the only one, a walmart) disabled the scales because they don't have the staffing to deal with all the false positives, i guess.. but anyway, i've gotten to just taking the wireless hand scanner (which is much quicker than the register's scanner) and scanning stuff in the cart and then bagging it right away--all right in the cart. only produce gets put up by the register, since it needs to be weighed anyway.
It's really the worst. For the uninitiated, the platen where your bags go is actually a scale. The self-check-kiosk software waits for this bagging scale to quit moving (see: de-bouncing) before weighing and approving the scan and purchase of a single item. This is why, occasionally, if you're too fast or too slow, the kiosk gets angry and makes you flag down an attendant.
That's not a problem for 10 items or less, but for a whole cart? All that waiting around adds up. Because of all that, it's literally impossible to achieve the same or better speed than an employee.
It's almost a straight ass grid. How are you being disoriented lol
Apparently it's a conspiracy that they play pop music and offer fresh bread on premises.
These people are fucking idiots.
Just try find and track the price per kg of a good, and you are in deep shit. Its some times hidden, after several "get the app", "two for one" just to find out the good is fucking more expensive if you refuse go though the privacy invasing hoops. What the fuck happended to "Limited time offer until this actually cheap batch is sold out!"
This must be a regulation in Canada or something because $/100g is always on the bottom for the tag in small print.
It definitely plays into that. But just the other day i was shopping on a pretty busy day, and someone just left their child in the cart playing Fortnite in the middle of the store. Every one bumper cart pushed him out of their way, into someone else's way. The kid didn't even bother to look up. Some people just don't give a shit.
I don't think you realize who runs grocery stores. Most are just there because they have to be. They just throw it on the shelf and do what they are told.
The people stocking the shelves aren't the ones designing the store layout, dummy.
Rude. I worked as a grocery manager for 15 years.
Dummy.
did you design the store layout?
Did you? Do you know how most are laid out? Please enlighten me on their "information bombardment".
A team from corporate designs the general layout, and the layout of most of the shelves, sometimes with help from an outside firm. Occasionally there will be specific shelves or event spaces that don't have a planogram will be laid out by someone in-store, but this is usually a pretty small percentage of the store.
Sure. But space optimization is also a consideration. You can't put a 24 pack of water on the top shelf for grandma to pick up. It's designed with the customer in mind as well.
it's the who does the telling who creates the hostile design. the other things you're describing, the dehumanization of the employees, are part of that design
There isn't anyone saying it's a hostile design. You don't know what you are talking about.
https://uxdesign.cc/how-grocery-store-layouts-manipulate-your-shopping-behavior-aa3cd59e8fc0
One article that I can't even fully read? Hardly call that evidence. It's an interesting hypothesis. However in practice impulse buys are not what the discussion was. It is that the entire store is there to "bombard" you. It's not. It's categorized and that's about it. You are thinking of the "sales" area. Which is routinely paid for by vendors.
okay. there's been research out about the disorienting nature of of grocery stores since the 1970s when piggly wiggly was first normalizing a certain sales area experience.
and yes. i am talking about the sales area. i wae never trying to claim otherwise. the context this entire time was the experience of being a customer inside a building whose only purpose is to extract value from you as you try to acquire basic living necessities.
and impulse buys in that context are a desired outcome of the overwhelming experience.
is your objection just my use of the word bombard? i can use a different word. overstimulate you. better?
like i can find more articles this was just literally the first thing i found and i hoped it would point you in the right direction and help you understand. but reading your comment here it almost feels like you've taken such great offense to how i've worded this that you can't be bothered to engage with what i've been saying since the start
I think that is not exclusive to grocery stores. Hence why my confusion. Every store from Best Buy to Kohls to Target to Costco to Auto Zone has a sale section for impulse buys.
Every company preys on people's psychology.
I understand just fine. I just don't agree it's aggressive or up to the workers. Including the management. Those directives are extremely high up the food chain in terms of decisions. And from my understanding the vendors pay for their space. They want to make it an impulse for that extra 6 pack or bag of chips.
The stores are told on a corporate level that items need to be stocked on certain shelves and all essential items (milk, eggs, whatever) need to be buried in the back behind anything that's on sale so customers have to look at everything before getting the basics.
Workers are people who follow orders and have to live with the chaos and help customers actually find the item they're looking for even though the company as a whole is the problem
No they aren't. They have reset crews that come and change the layout for many reasons. I was a grocery manager for 15 years. Specifically the stocking manager. There has never been a "bombard them with information" directive.
It's what sells best in the area and make it available. It's not that highly coordinated.