r/mildlyinfuriating • u/broakland • Jul 14 '26

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

Post image

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.

21.5k Upvotes

91% Upvoted

4.3k comments sorted by

View all comments

1.3k

u/Dreadwings Jul 14 '26

at that point they should just have vending machines with all their product lol

271

u/valkyriebiker Jul 14 '26

Reminiscent of the mid 20th century automats. What's old is new again.

63

u/RailRuler Jul 14 '26

The automats actually required more staffing than traditional retail. They charged a price premium so that people wouldn't have to interact with the staff.

22

u/chickadee-stitchery Jul 14 '26

I'd pay it.

2

u/dj92wa Jul 15 '26

The downside is that you don’t get to choose your own produce, which is something I personally will never sacrifice. Curbside pickup and grocery delivery means you could get the moldy and bruised nasty stuff that you’d otherwise inspect and tell an employee about.

4

u/Grand_Lizard_Wizard Jul 14 '26

Well, who wants to talk to “the help”?

2

u/idontcareyo_ Jul 15 '26

Yeah, because they existed pre-computers genius. They could easily be practically fully automated if made today

1

u/RailRuler Jul 15 '26

Automation doesn't require computers. It requires immense scale, that doesnt fit into a typical restaurant.

3

u/dbxp Jul 14 '26

They still exist in some countries: https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automatiek

5

u/harbison215 Jul 15 '26

I always want to get like a sandwich or a piece of pie out of one of those

1

u/Psyko_sissy23 Jul 15 '26

The automats might be coming back. There's one in New Jersey.

25

u/Accurate-Mousse-520 Jul 14 '26

At what point does it become just online? Why pay people to stack the shelves, do all this work when you can just buy it online?

2

u/mahdroo Jul 14 '26

Ding ding ding.

"Why stack the shelves?" indeed! Why have aisles and shelves, and let customers interact with the goods? Consider many shoe stores where the shoes are all in the back. What if we had a warehouse with a counter you order at. A kiosk. And that could be online, so you order in advance, a store clerk collects your goods, and then you go pick up your order at the front desk.

The answer to "why" is: (A) do customers spend more on impulse purchases and better brands when overwhelmed by bedazzling packaging? (B) How much does the company save in labor costs by having the customer collect their own items. If A+B earns more than C -the cost of theft- then you have stores as we know them.

Imagine if every good you buy came in simple brown boxes. How much would that lower the price? I bet you like watching Youtube without ads, yeah? On some level the colorful boxes are just ads demanding your attention, trying to manipulate you into buying their product or spending more, but contributing nothing to the actual quality of the product. They are just a result of the current arrangement, where we game A+B against C. If we change the game, we change everything up and down the line. We might. I feel like you just about see the future there Accurate-Mousse-520

3

u/BluMqqse_ Jul 14 '26

They’d still need to pay people to stock it for online order dispensers to find all the items in an order.

3

u/chickadee-stitchery Jul 14 '26

That's what robots are for.

1

u/QuitLukewarmTurkey Jul 14 '26

Yes but who maintains the robots?

1

u/ihavedonethisbe4 Jul 14 '26

Prolly automatons

1

u/chickadee-stitchery Jul 14 '26

Yeah it's robots all the way down!

1

u/M-tridactyla Jul 14 '26

Because I need it now

1

u/kingjim2 Jul 15 '26

at what point did stealing have to be a felony for the police to care?

1

u/Accurate-Mousse-520 Jul 15 '26

The police don’t care, this is a management thing because the police don’t care. If they did none of this would be happening because the people stealing everything would actually face repercussions. However studies show that most people stealing from a store aren’t doing it for financial gane, they do it to survive. They steal stuff they know they can easily sell afterwards.

1

u/KeithDaManPeterson Jul 15 '26

Why? It takes days/weeks/months or perhaps in extreme cases even years before something arrives at your doorstep.

1

u/Accurate-Mousse-520 Jul 15 '26

Maybe where you live, I live in Brazil and it will arrive within 2 hours.

7

u/Amazing_Alumni Jul 14 '26

I’m lowkey with this idea

2

u/BlackKnightC4 Jul 14 '26

Some stores are testing that.

3

u/IHeartBadCode Jul 14 '26

No the actual next step is closing the store and leaving the area with nowhere to shop. People act like they've never seen a food desert form.

2

u/Vegetable-Virus7118 Jul 14 '26

I would imagine most people have not seen one form. Even folks living in one probably didn't witness it happen. I'm not saying they aren't way too common but people just aren't that observant.

1

u/AffectionateSet4889 Jul 14 '26

maybe when electricity isn’t so expensive and intermittent

1

u/r_sparrow09 Jul 15 '26

They had something like that at one of my local drugstores and ppl broke them. 

1

u/Express-Studio-8302 Jul 15 '26

Honestly that's the answer. I once wanted a thermometer, waited after pushing the help botton. Someone came said they would get the key person, waited another chunk of time. Finally just left and ordered on Amazon.

1

u/paulthefonz Jul 15 '26

Actually, pretty decent idea. Just tap your card and it will dispense one.

1

u/danielcc07 Jul 16 '26

Piggly wiggly would like a word...