Split queues for casual groceries and ranked competitive groceries
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?
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
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.
they’re also designing that space to make you take as long as possible to get through it
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.
grocery stores bake bread and spread bread smell since it perks people up
I haven't noticed this in a grocery store for years.
play specific music that calms and soothe
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
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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.
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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.
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We need to also test your ability to spend money. I swear people at self checkout act like they have never used a credit/debit card in there life.
But also at regular checkouts.
You've just stood there motionless for the last 4 minutes, while someone else (potentially two people) scanned and bagged your purchases for you.
How is it that JUST NOW is the time you've decided is right to rummage through your bag for your wallet/purse, or check your banking app on your phone to see if the account actually has money in it? What were you doing for the rest of the time that was so vitally important?
I swear you can just about hear the birds flying around in their head sometimes.
There's one bird in their head that's half alive just bouncing around like the DVD logo.
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I remember my days as a cashier when a guy in his 50s came up to buy something and was just like "I don't know how this works my wife does the shopping". I just scanned his items and gave him the total. Once again he couldn't understand.
I had to give this grown man step by step instructions on making a purchase. Including how to use a card for payment.
It was wild. Even in a world where his wife does the shopping has he never ran into a gas station for a snack or gone to lunch on his own?
Even in a world where his wife does the shopping has he never ran into a gas station for a snack or gone to lunch on his own?
When you willfully reject responsibility, you don't think clearly. Human capabilities like pattern recognition will be ignored.
Could just also have been outright fear. Waaay too many people did this for computers in the 90's and 00's They hit something they don't understand and they just freeze.
I had this nurse out of state. She had worked her entire life on paper. Xeroxed forms, filled them out, filed them. She was only in her 30's. We were a big healthcare company, and she started working for us. We had a strong need to have things digitized. She had just convinced her coworker to key in all her forms after she took care of them, but the situation was untenable. Her boss called me, we need her to have her own computer so she can learn to use it. AOK, I configured and mailed one right away.
Boss calls me back, a week later. so and so can't get on. OH OK!, what's the error? You'll need to talk to her. That's fine can you put her on? Ohh um she just left. K, can you have her call me when she gets back and we'll sort it out right away.
A day goes by, Two, Boss calls me, So and So still can't get on. She never called me, yeah let me put her on the line.
[muffled argument]
[long silence]
soandso: meekest voice hello
me: HI! let's get you on your laptop, this should only take a second.
soandso: mumbles
me: i missed that, what was that?
[long silence]
me: I hear you can't get on your laptop, let's fix that. Did your password just not work? where did you get stuck?
[long silence]
soandso: mumbles
me: I can't hear you, if you speak up a touch, we'll get you going
[long silence]
soandso: almost a whisper I don't know what to do
Me: quiet and reserved, shooting for soothing ok, that's not a problem, we'll go through step by step until it works, do you have the laptop in front of you?
soandso: a whisper yes
Me: is it open?
soandso: a whisper no
Me: ok, lets open it up, do you see a button on the front, you'll need to press that and pull up on the lid
[long silence]
soandso: light sobbing it's still in the box
me: [internally: JESUS] ok, no proble, let's get that box open
90 minutes, in an hour and half, we got the box open, got the laptop out, opened it up, too a 5 minute break to sob and then re-collect herself. found the power button (this took 10 minutes alone) it was on the upper right of the keyboard, she made me walk her up from control, to shift to enter and so on. It came on, it was already setup for their wifi, all she had to do was enter the username and password which i had emailed to her boss and asked her to write it on a sticky.
She finally was on the desktop
soandso: morose now what
me: We're done, you'll need to work with your boss now to find out how to do your actual work on it, but you should be able to get in now.
She lasted another week before they fired her.
She was an RN, she knew medical coding, and she drove, she was just terrified of learning new shit
Working retail, or any job with the public, is wild.
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i worked at a grocery store for a few years, you want to go after 7pm and all your wishes will come true
I love to go as early as possible. There are only old people around me and everything is calm and chill.
God forbid you need to check out (only one checkout lane open bc it's so early) right behind one of those old people as they take about 65 centuries to pull exact change out of their asses
The other day I went shopping with my parents and my mother proceeded to pull out a whole lot of coupons. Clearly they are not long for this world.
Although I will give her credit, they were all actually in date
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"15 items or less" lanes should charge extra for going over. 0-20 no charge, 21+ = $1 per extra item (including the 16-20). That money goes towards whoever uses the register after you.
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My partner has normalised spatial awareness, and no situational awareness. I do my best to herd her around for the good of mankind but I can only do so much
Why not build a separate one to train those without such?
I mean, if we're doing a two tier thing, surely it'd at least be educational, to help the disadvantaged...
Entry Level Grocery Store sounds like a future slur.
"the bloody elgs can't be trusted"
What's funny about this is that literally everyone will read this and think it means other people. No one thinks this way about themselves.
Can we also make people who still pay for things at a store with a check go to the bad one? It was before the pan, but I couldn't believe what I was seeing when a lady pulled out her checkbook in front of me at the checkout line. Gtf outta here.
The USA continues to baffle me. You people still have paper checks? I haven't seen one in at least 30 years in Europe (before that I was too little to care about such things, so I might never have seen one)
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I've almost never felt this, same with other comments here saying people can't handle self checkout. Here in Sweden, at least in my city, people behave like you'd expect normal functional adults to behave. The only people who can be an annoyance are groups of kids/teenagers, and it's very much not all of them either.
Sounds like sweden might have a higher average IQ amongst their population
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I know the point of this thread is "ugh, people, man" and it's not really meant to be engaged with deeper than that, but this is a really bad idea. It would be used to justify racism and ableism and would be a really unpleasant place to be in, too. Karen city, with no one to speak out about it.
Imagine that spike of anxiety at the check-out where you feel rushed because you're at the front of the line, but instead of it being mostly in your head it's now a real thing with real consequences. That's my nightmare
Yeah. In fact, society is full of people who aren't getting things 100% correct and we just have to be accepting of that. So i don't like this post.
BUT: the fact that some people don't get systems like this 100% all the time is proof that we should abolish car dependency and prioritise public safety precautions. [r/FuckCars]
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Do you want elitist grocery stores in LA? Because that's how you get elitist grocery stores in LA.
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Only if we build similar airports. I understand not everbody is a regular business traveler, but somehow the people in front of me always seem fascinated with the novel concept of flying and airport security, spending 10 minutes emptying the pockets and putting their stuff on the conveyor belt.
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Couldn't think of a way to go out of business faster than having a competent-customers-only policy.
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