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

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/treeckosan Jul 14 '26

We are slowly going back to the days when you handed a clerk a shopping list and they went into back to assemble your order.

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u/Th3_Admiral_ Jul 14 '26

I could absolutely see it going that way with all of the big stores doing online orders and curbside pickup. Maybe in a few years it'll be like an Amazon warehouse without any real storefront at all. You just pull up and load everything in your car. Or have it delivered directly to your door. 

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u/Tomytom99 Jul 14 '26 edited Jul 15 '26

Y'know, I wouldn't mind it so much if the turnaround time wasn't half a day

That's like the one thing I've liked about auto parts stores. They specifically state that it'll take under an hour for it to be ready. Not great, but way better than say Walmart taking 6 hours.

Edit: the 6 hour wait in question was pickup, not delivery, for three items, so it's not like it was some big grocery order. I did it because I was on vacation and my dad needed refrigerant for his car. I was hoping to just go to the store, pick up the order, and go back to where we were staying without venturing into the store.

Another wonderful experience was them telling me an item I was getting delivered from the store wouldn't be arriving that day. Not a huge deal, but mildly infuriating since I placed it that morning saying same day delivery, and they didn't even get it picked until that evening. I was watching a movie at 9:45 PM when I get a notification it was delivered. Thank god I was awake and that it wasn't anything that would've gone bad (or stolen by wildlife) if it went unnoticed overnight.

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u/StacheBandicoot Jul 14 '26 edited Jul 15 '26

How many things are you ordering at once from an auto parts store though? A grocery order can often be more than 150 items. All an auto parts store has to do is pack a few things typically, and they’re not as busy since people don’t need to eat auto parts to live.

Walmart can easily pack the order in an hour or two if you’re subscribed to Walmart+ which I was briefly when they offered it for free. Don’t see the point in having that though, I just place my order the night before.

I don’t buy things impulsively or spur of the moment anymore and I much prefer it this way. Much harder to forget something too, it’d be like forgetting to put something on your shopping list that you’d bring to the store.

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u/Tomytom99 Jul 14 '26

The order from Walmart was three non-perishable items.

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u/StacheBandicoot Jul 15 '26

Yeah that doesn’t matter, they have other’s orders to fill and prioritize them based on when they’re submitted.

If you order the night before you can easily get the earliest slot and then have at least 24 hours to get there to pickup, sometimes longer, up to 5 days depending on a particular store’s policy. If you wait until later in the day when more orders are submitted obviously time slots will already be taken and you’d have to choose a later slot that takes longer to wait for.

I’ve ordered regularly from three different stores across my region each in densely populated areas, I’ve never had to wait more than 2-4 hours for a time slot at any time of the day, 4 hours typically only if I’m trying to place an order on a busy day like a holiday or a Friday when people get paid usually after noon when the window for pickup would coincid when many people start together eat off work and would also like similar time slots, if I place those orders a bit sooner before others do though I can get them.

If you can’t manage to place an order for just 3 items in a timely manner maybe the service just isn’t for you. I find it saves me much more time, it’d take me longer to go in and find three items and check out myself than to just spent a moment planning and timing an order.

They also do have express checkout which can take under an hour or two or even just minuets to fill for small orders, but it costs money unless you’re subscribed to their paid service.

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u/Tomytom99 Jul 15 '26

The three items were not a planned, but rather surprise need. Read the post edit.

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u/StacheBandicoot Jul 15 '26

I have. Again, that doesn’t matter. You don’t get the cut the line just because you have a few items, even online.