My Grocery Store Rant

I am one of those people who choose their grocery store by location. I want to go to the store closest to me, and unless that store has a bad smell, sticky floors or some other very obvious reason not to go there I go there regularly.
My current grocery store is the Kroger that if I was crazy enough I could walk to, and probably get home with the ice cream still frozen on a mild temperature day. I also liked the store when I first started going there. The HEB down the road, which I have only been to once. I was not impressed by, no reason just really didn't want to be there, why go twice as far for the same stuff?
With that said let me tell you the things I don't like about my grocery store:

• It doesn't carry YoBaby yogurt the yogurt I want for my child, because it is whole milk yogurt and no added sugar.
  
• It also does not carry the new "snackable" lunchables, which are the right size for an easy Joy lunch.
  
• My bags each week weigh a ton. You think I am exaggerating? They have on more than one occasion decided to put the half gallon of milk with the gallon of milk. Sobe's which are made of glass and about 4 is a good bag of them, they will put 6-8.
  
• The bags have mixed content. Frozen items will go with canned goods. Canned goods will go with dairy things. Meats will go with fruit (that one weirded me out and I washed the fruit 10 times better than usual!). In general when I come home I never know what I will find in what bag. So those days when I am in a hurry to just get the cold stuff in the fridge or freezer I must go through EVERY bag to be sure nothing frozen is with a pantry item. No quick glances because I will and have missed items that way. That is my biggest pet peeve with the store.
  
• I am also no longer fond of the employees they have I can't recall the last time one has started a friendly conversation with me while they check out my groceries or whatever. I am lucky if they even talk to me at all. I think last night all the girls said was do you have a Kroger card.

Now I can overlook most of these things. I go to Target for the food I can't find at the grocery store. I no longer live in an upstairs apartment so the heavy bags are not as detrimental as they use to be. The rude employees, they are everywhere so I guess sometimes you just have to hire these people, but they could at least try and train them to be nicer!

On top of all this I went grocery shopping after putting Joy to bed last night. I get there (7:45 on a Saturday) and first thing they don't have many carts in the store. If I had been thinking I would have gotten a gallon of milk and left to try again another day. So their is one line of carts I wait while the woman in front of me gets her cart. I was standing at a polite distance but anyone who looked would have known I was next in line. So she has her cart and this couple comes up and walks within two feet of me and gets their cart! HEY I WAS WAITING PATIENTLY! (Did I mention I was already in a mood?) Whatever, I hope their cart has a bad wheel, and move on to get my cart. I meander through the cheese and deli section, and get to the cooler with the berries. Joy loves berries and I like to get her some fresh fruit so I was aiming for blue berries. The same couple was standing with their cart blocking the entire cooler! Grrr, finally enough space to get the blueberries and go. Onward, no other major issues, the shopping is going okay, the TV's in the aisles baffle me, they could have spent that money on something like product research and asking me what I want in the store. I get to the baby aisle, I don't need anything but to go up the aisle to get to the dairy cheese case. I notice a fallen wet floor sign and as I get closer notice a yellow liquid puddled what would have been under it. I will let you guess what you think it was I am pretty sure I know (it's the baby aisle, you know diapers etc.) A little grossed out by the fact that no one seems to be around taking care of this immediately I keep going. The next happening was a mother and son team are shopping together. The son is about 13 in my guess and they both have carts. Neither looks full enough to warrant this but whatever. That is until the completely block my path to the aisle I am headed to. I did a little thumb twiddling until they finally noticed and moved on. Next I encountered a child skating around the store on those annoying skate shoes. She is pretty adept but is cutting people off left and right. I finally found the parent, it was a dad with his 2 kids (the girl and a younger boy) shopping alone, and obviously with a list mom made. The girl was the errand runner for all the missed items and dad and the boy were in a race car by the way the dad was driving (in fun for the boy, which I actually found cute). Anyway I finally finish my shopping and I go to check out. This is where I encountered friendly the cashier. No hello, no how are you, no did you find everything you were looking for, just when she was done in a somewhat rude tone do you have your Kroger card? I felt like she was reprimanding me for not having it out, and putting her out for having to even say that to me. Don't think that she was not capable of speaking due to some laryngitis or something, because she was constantly talking even answered the phone at her station to talk about a previous customer with whoever called. I leave the store without a goodbye. I was cold, I was tired and I am thinking of going twice as far down the road to check out the HEB. Maybe they can say hello. Problem is I get a discount on my gas for shopping at Kroger, is it worth the $0.10 a gallon?