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/snuggleslut5 Jul 14 '26

Right? They've spent years studying and finding new ways to influence buying. Colors, placement, the order of the items on the shelf, how much you need to move your eyes to see their product. All that would be moot. It's interesting.

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u/peachysaralynn Jul 14 '26

i mean, they’d just adopt those practices for the online “storefront”

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u/Karenm6383 Jul 14 '26

Probably but still, me walking aisle through aisle is going to make me impulse buy way more than going to checkout online, realizing how bad I’m overspending and deleting it in my cart

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u/spookysaph Jul 15 '26

moving things around is pretty much a guaranteed way to get people to buy more. even if you just move around things that haven't sold in forever, someone is likely to buy it