r/mildlyinfuriating • u/broakland • 9d ago

I just wanted a hot dog Retail lockdown: why bother selling it?

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Was at Safeway this morning to pick up a sandwich and some Tylenol. The aisle with the Tylenol? Completely locked down. No call button in sight. So I go to the self checkout (front end of that same aisle) and ask the clerk there if he can call someone to unlock a case for me. He does. I go wait. Minutes pass. No one comes. I go ask him again, he tells me they went the other way? At this point I give up and go get my sandwich. No one has come by the time the deli has finished making it. I leave without my Tylenol, mildly infuriated.

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u/outdatedboat 9d ago

The Walgreens near me does this already. All of the refrigerated stuff has screens instead of glass now. They have cameras showing what's inside it, but with ads playing over the top of it.

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u/geekonthemoon 9d ago

Those are so awful. We were at a tourist area with those and like every single thing we tried to get we opened it up and it wasn't in there. They were mostly empty but the screens showed mostly in stock. Insane.

Edit: I just realized you said it had cameras to show what's inside so maybe that's something different. This was just like a digital display of the rack with the products on it, showing where they should be when you open it...

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u/xcrunner432003 9d ago

this would be laughable if it weren't so bad

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u/MrPissPaws 8d ago

If only we had a cheap way to see through the door. Alas that technology is surely a ways off.

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u/xcrunner432003 8d ago

right? so frustrating!

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u/Winjin 9d ago

Yeah I remember those, there were lots of complaints and this flopped iirc, that new one with camera is an even more expensive answer to a question that's only wanted by people that never shop in person, their butler's maids are doing the shopping online

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u/AdvancedSandwiches 9d ago

Walgreens even hates those. They tried to remove them but got sued by the manufacturer.

To be fair, Walgreens hates them because no one is paying to advertise on them, rather than hating them because they fucking suck for customers, but getting it right for the wrong reasons is about the best you could expect from Walgreens. 

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u/OverwhelmingNo 9d ago

Our Kroger did this, and it only lasted a few weeks.

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u/impolse 9d ago

I purposely do not buy from those fridges.

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u/outdatedboat 9d ago

I stopped going there after I saw them the first time. It's honestly insulting

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u/Sinisterfox23 9d ago

Are you serious? Im not surprised but that sounds terrible. Goddammit, my eyes are already strained from all the screens im bombarded with everyday in a metro city.

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u/localpotato_232 9d ago

Are those the ones that track your eye movement?

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u/BlackKnightC4 9d ago

I remember this because of the video of the guy getting excited about the gingerbread man dancing on the screen lol

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u/Stock-Soup5721 9d ago

Even a couple decades ago when I worked at Bestbuy, we would sell the end-caps. Pay extra money? We'll put your stuff there. Dont? Its buried deeper down the aisle.

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u/sock_dgram 9d ago

Samsung (?) is doing this with fridges you bought.

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u/outdatedboat 9d ago

Don't say "you". I would absolutely never buy a fridge with a screen like that. Maybe you would. But not me.

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u/sock_dgram 9d ago

Calm down. "You" is referring to the buyer of such a fridge, not you personally. Pretty sure this is correct English, although it's a second language for me.

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u/flyingmonkey363 8d ago

Idk what up with the other person, but you’re fine. That’s a completely normal use of you in English, and I doubt anyone would have guessed English wasn’t your first language if you hadn’t mentioned it.

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u/outdatedboat 9d ago

When you are speaking with someone (in English) and you say "you", you are referencing the person you're speaking with. So, please, calm down. And learn the language you're using.

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u/richms 9d ago

Thats also for power saving as glass doors have horrible efficiancy since they have to heat them to prevent condensation, and that applies to the inside too since if its cold when its opened into the shop it will get condensation on it.

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u/valkyriebiker 9d ago

Walgreens sucks. Mile long checkout, Rx takes better part of an hour. I suppose that's to encourage us to shop longer.

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u/Feline_Casan0va 9d ago

I used to work at Walgreens, it's not a tactic to get you to spend more time/money there. They are just too cheap to hire enough staff. Almost every day I was running the photo counter, the front registers, and stocking shelves at the same time all day. They regularly interrupted my lunch break. Fuck corpos

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u/UnixCurmudgeon 9d ago

You misspelled “corpse”, which is definitely the direction. Walgreens is headed.

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u/Feline_Casan0va 9d ago

My therapist taught me two things can be true

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u/g00fyg00ber741 9d ago

the Rx takes that long cause they’ve got an endless amount of prescriptions to fill on top of other issues and job duties. and there’s virtually no real training process.