What's On Your List Today?

I am a devout Fred Meyer grocery shopper, which is a constant source of ridicule from my more cost conscientious friends who claim that my favorite grocery store is too expensive. However, the fact is that if you really wanted to get the best price possible then doing your grocery shopping at only one store would most assuredly not be an option. Instead that sort of endeavor would require planning and stops at no less than three grocery stores and maybe even a drug store or two. Hell, after you factor in gas prices, the psychic toll caused by your inevitable traffic anguish, and the mileage involved then the savings, if you can still call it that, probably isn’t worth the trouble required. Besides, I, not unlike most grocery shoppers, don’t choose my store based on cost alone. Instead I’m looking at factors like convenience, and, most importantly, familiarity.

It’s the last bit, familiarity, which really is my primary concern. In the 3+ years that I’ve been shopping at Fred Meyer I’ve become a sort of speed shopping savant who is capable of planning the quickest route based on any (the more complex the better) shopping list. I’ve become so skilled, in fact, that I’m contemplating starting my own Fred Meyer mapping service where customers would hand me their shopping list and I, in turn, would provide the quickest possible route from the entrance to the checkout stand for them, complete with a hand drawn map and a cereal box compass (magnetic north be damned). Need a yo-yo, a bag of Chex mix, and a loaf of Gouda? Well, I’m your man, step right up.

There is only one little hitch though, and that is that like all small brained business plans, this one, sadly, will never get off the ground. Why? Because, coming from what I like to call, “the great Fred Meyer corporate mandate of 2006”, my local Freddy’s has decided to rearrange their shit.

That’s balls.

They should’ve put a disclaimer on the ad I received in the mail today that the USDA Choice T-Bone steaks that they so prominently displayed on page 1 had a new home. Just that small little declaration would’ve been enough. I consider myself a solid C-student so I’m pretty confident that with this small, but very helpful, tip of the hat I would’ve been able to figure that there would be a small trickle down effect in the meat department. That the frozen food section was also rearranged, apparently at random, is besides the point and completely beyond me. They didn’t have to do that. They could’ve kept things simple. They could’ve just put the chicken where the beef had been and left the pork in its right place as a buffer between the two. But, no! They had to go and mangle the frozen food section too.

The bottom line is this: Fred Meyer has simultaneously destroyed my small business idea and completely changed an environment that I had become comfortably familiar with. It’s like a whole new world in there. I flirted, albeit briefly, with the idea of giving Safeway a crack at my business, and if not for those damn club cards I may have. In the end what should’ve taken a mere 7 minutes and 23 seconds (savant I say!) took a half hour, and, that my friends, is not cool. Not cool at all.

And I still can’t find a frickin’ yo-yo to save my life.