i always got mad, as long as i remember because WHY would they change it if IT WORKED FOR ALL MY LIFE

god damn it

I've always assumed it's to keep you browsing. You might notice something you'd otherwise usually walk straight past.

To force people to spend more time shopping. More time means more chance for impulse buying and better sales. Basic marketing.

They do it to make you spend more time browsing. Shoppers typically get the same stuff every time they get groceries. Over time people learn the layout of their local store and develop efficient patterns to move through it and get everything they want. When the store shuffles everything around they force shoppers to wander around the store and to look at all the shelves carefully for the stuff they actually want. Some percentage of them end up finding new things to buy and spend more money.

If they mix up the layout you're forced to look at more products instead of automatically going to the places you expect a product to be. It's a marketing tactic.

There's more reasons than that but if it's definitely one of the bigger reasons a small stock change can trigger a total mix up of the whole aisle.

I've always found it funny, because they'll move it again next year, and its pointless. Self-important supervisors changing stuff to feel important. Somebody thought it was important 🤣

I'm more upset about places trying to charge $8 for a goddamn box of Cinnamon Toast Crunch.

I saw Ryan Gosling at a grocery store in Los Angeles yesterday. I told him how cool it was to meet him in person, but I didn’t want to be a douche and bother him and ask him for photos or anything.

He said, “Oh, like you’re doing now?”

I was taken aback, and all I could say was “Huh?” but he kept cutting me off and going “huh? huh? huh?” and closing his hand shut in front of my face. I walked away and continued with my shopping, and I heard him chuckle as I walked off. When I came to pay for my stuff up front I saw him trying to walk out the doors with like fifteen Milky Ways in his hands without paying.

The girl at the counter was very nice about it and professional, and was like “Sir, you need to pay for those first.” At first he kept pretending to be tired and not hear her, but eventually turned back around and brought them to the counter.

When she took one of the bars and started scanning it multiple times, he stopped her and told her to scan them each individually “to prevent any electrical infetterence,” and then turned around and winked at me. I don’t even think that’s a word. After she scanned each bar and put them in a bag and started to say the price, he kept interrupting her by yawning really loudly.

Grocery store by me rearranged the store so that it was organized by country, instead of by type of product. Now there's 4 individual locations to pick a bag of beans from because the red kidney beans from Iraq are sooooo muuuuuch different than the red kidney beans from costa rica.

Studies show more time spent in the store equates to more sales. They have to measure time in store and extra sales against time to reorganize. As regular time moves forward it becomes increasingly worth more to rearrange until it outweighs the time to reorganize by a certain margin.

Or try doing your shopping in a store you’ve never been to before. That’s some Tomb Raider shit right there.

Walmart keeps moving the Cheetos Jalapeno Popcorn. It's like they don't want me to buy it.

It's just some Sales Optimization Consultant trying to justify their existence. Leave them be, they have their own problems.

I cried when they closed the old Walmart for a super center when I was a child. This isn’t an age thing it’s a comfort from familiarity thing.

Even the Disney store has a Frozen Isle now.

Grocery chains have software for putting together shelf arrangements. Suppliers have to pay if they want their products at a quality location at eye level, or near the ends of the aisle. And of course pay more for things like endcap displays.

I don't get mad at that as much as I get mad when products are placed in the wrong fucking isle, like the fucking Wal-Mart in Heartsville, SC, where everything is everywhere except on the isle it's labeled to go in.

I think Aldi is so successful in the US because they don't do this. There is an aisle or two with random crap, and seasonal items in another spot, but I can be in and out with everything I went for in ten minutes. Trader Joe's might do this too, I haven't been to one in a long time. I wonder if Whole Foods or the other upscale stores fuck around with their shoppers like that.

Smaller grocery chains or independent grocers didnt change their store layouts from what I remember, but they went under or were bought out by the big chains that are already very profitable but still try to wring everything they can out of their captive audience.

Thars why i order groceries online. Let them find their own damn food.