Speaking of the dairy signs, here's a front-on view of the main one, along with a profile view of the smaller one! And I mentioned the weird, different flip-chart price signs earlier, but here's a normal one, so maybe those were just a grocery thing.
For all the talk about how I hardly ever shop at Wal-Mart these days, I actually ended up at a Wal-Mart this past weekend since I was looking for a particular item and could not find it at a couple of other shops I tried. The particular Wal-Mart I went to was the second to last Wal-Mart I went to prior, but that was way back in 2019! Thus, I misremembered that store having concrete floors. I was in for quite a surprise when I walked in, passed the automatic gates (which were being used normally), and saw a white vinyl floor! It was a good surprise though. The decor at the Wal-Mart must be older though because it doesn't look anything like this or those black and white disasters.
ReplyDeleteWhile the flooring and general appearance of the store was a pleasant surprise, some of the problems I was expecting were also evident. The items I was looking for did not have right price tags on the hooks/shelves containing the items. That has been a Wal-Mart problem for quite some time now. I know Wal-Mart used to have price scanners, but I could not find one on this visit either. I don't know where they were hiding if they even are still around. Then, of course, there was the expected problem that they only had 2 manned checkouts open and the lines were quite long. It probably took 15 minutes just to pay.
Will I be returning to Wal-Mart anytime soon? Probably not, but if I do, that might be the location I would go to since the store at least doesn't look too bad if it is not remodeled.
On another side note, on that same trip, I visited a 7-Eleven for the first time in over 30 years! Well, I didn't even go inside it, but I did fill up the car there. I suppose that counts as a visit, lol.
I tried to post a reply to the orange juice post yesterday, but Blogger was having nothing to do with that. It didn't even work with private mode turned off. Grr. Everything seems to work fine today.
I'm the same way -- I ended up shopping at (and photographing) another Walmart this past weekend. (I was buying things I would normally buy online, but I just haven't felt like shopping online lately for whatever reason... plus, it was right across the street from some stores I've wanted to visit for a long time.) But yet again, they were out of one of the three things I wanted to buy. 🙄 This time, the store I visited was a non-Supercenter with Black Decor 2.x, but even with the less-nice decor, the store was much more pleasant to shop at -- because it was very low on customers, which is what I'm used to with local Walmarts. This store we're looking at now is a real anomaly in terms of how busy it was!
DeleteOh yeah, that's another problem with Walmarts around here. I guess it's not something that sticks with me the way the stock issues do, but it's still annoying. From what I've seen locally, it seems like Walmarts still have their price scanner stations, but they no longer have the big signs directing you to them (even in Airport, which is supposed to be all about improved wayfinding!).
I believe I've been in a 7-Eleven a grand total of once, to get a free slurpee on 7/11 day! They aren't very common around here, and ones with gas stations even less so.
Ugh, Blogger, why?? I really need to find a new way of doing this, but I haven't found another free option that I like.
While I was at the Wal-Mart, I decided to look at a couple of other items I normally buy from elsewhere just to see what their prices were like. For one of those items, I could not find the item on the shelves. I don't even know if they sell the product or if they sell it and was just out of it because the price tags on the shelves were so disorganized. It probably goes without saying that this kind of stuff keeps me from shopping in their stores more often than I do!
DeleteI ended up stopping at Kroger on the way back and buying the item from there. I'm sure Kroger is more expensive, but at least they had the item and at least I could find it and the corresponding price quite easily.
The only non-Supercenter Wal-Mart I can think of that is in my area or on my path to/from work is the one near the Kosher Randall's I mentioned the other day. I'm not sure how busy that store is, but the Wal-Mart Supercenters around here are usually pretty busy. I will say that the Wal-Mart Supercenter I went to wasn't too busy by Wal-Mart standards during my visit, but I also entered through the housewares entrance and did all my shopping in that half of the store. That part of Wal-Mart Supercenters is usually quite a bit less hectic than the grocery side, but I still had to deal with the long lines. Yeah, I could have used the self-checkouts for my minimal purchase, but I felt almost compelled to use the manned checkouts just to let Wal-Mart know that they still need those.
We had 7-Elevens here for many decades (they were founded in Texas after all), but they left town in the late 1980s and didn't come back until recently. Since they've come back, they've become like Starbucks in that they're popping up all over the place. They even have some gas stations which they own, but aren't labeled as being 7-Elevens. It's quite strange. Anyway, the 7-Eleven gas pumps I used (which actually had Mobil gas, but not all 7-Elevens are Mobils here) seemed perfectly fine. I have no complaints. Of course, the station is new so we'll see how well it ages. Another gas station with a McDonald's used to sit on that land, but that gas station and the McDonald's are now gone. It's a rare case of a McDonald's closing, but I think the Wal-Mart McDonald's was still open. At least I think I saw that.
Mike at HHR uses WordPress. I actually think he runs WP on his own server, which is probably not what you want to do, but maybe the hosted WP can be configured the way you want it. Maybe not, I really don't know. WP seems okay from a composing perspective in my limited experience using it to post my guest posts at HHR.
Yeah, that would certainly be rather offputting! At least around here, Walmart and Target have better prices than Safeway, but only by a little bit, so it's only worth it for me to shop there when I'm already in the area for some reason.
DeleteSelf-hosted WordPress is what I've been thinking about moving to. The only issue is that it costs a good bit of money to go that route, between buying a domain name and paying for web hosting (since I don't really want to run it off my own computer/internet). It's not too expensive I suppose, but more than the $0 I'm paying now!