I have found myself going to Safeway very rarely in the last year. This last weekend, I had to pick up my daughter's prescription at the last second and ran into my neighborhood Safeway store at 8:30am. "Rats, they don't open up till 9:00am" I will have a cup of coffee at the Starbucks and check out their magazine rack. Nothing really to make my visit a "Wow Experience"!

I am the shopper for our family (coupons in hand) and I was pretty religious about going to the Safeway every week for the last 16 years. About four or five years ago they remodeled the store and it was the start of the demise. Things drastically were moved around and I thought that the whole remodel was a large waste of expense (did they even take the neighborhood into consideration before they made major changes?). They are one of the few stores that use carts that have an electronic braking devise attached to it so that vagrants and locals couldn't remove the carts from the lot. I also noticed that even with everything marked down and use of my Safeway Savings Card still had me walking away with $100-$150 of food a week for three of us. (I have also learned some secrets about how they are going to use all that information that gets racked up on those cards. I will speak more to that in another blog post!)

I thought to myself, "I would be a Great Mystery Shopper"!

Couple of things that I noticed when I was waiting:

1. Frito Lay truck parked in customer parking lot.

2. No remote services for people in the local neighborhood.

3. New manager busy working not even looking up to give the cordial "How's it going & can I help you find anything?"

4. Display stands in front of display stands (in front of the check outs). Why would they do that? It allows for less traffic to freely move in front of the cashiers & covers up the other display stands.

5. People standing in line waiting to use the BlockBuster video rental. Would it help to offer them something to do while they are waiting?

6. Caught the Pharmasist on a bad day. . .

7. Magazines double stacked to fill space.

I have been told that the Rose City store has the largest retail receipts in all Oregon. It seems to me that they are just another big business trying to go through the motions. I am pretty happy at Winco. . .for the cheaper prices of groceries I really don't have any high expectations. I am more than happy to bag my groceries and talk to disgruntled checkers.

Doesn't this sound pathetic? What would you do to make this a more memorable experience?

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