There were sure a lot of balloons on display here, both special Mother's Day ones and standard everyday designs. I always enjoy seeing this sort of thing -- Safeways used to always be full of balloons when I was growing up, but in recent years (probably due to some combination of the helium shortage and understaffing) it's become less and less common for them to have large numbers of balloons on display.
Randall's still has a lot of balloons. Maybe they don't have as many on a regular basis as this Albertsons has in the photo, but they do have more balloons for holidays than otherwise. Of course, Randall's still have staffed floral desks here, which it sounds like your Safeways don't have, so maybe that has something to do with it.
ReplyDeleteSpeaking of floral at Randall's, the 'secondary' entrance at my local Randall's was unusually closed during my last visit. This is the one that opens up right to the floral department. I don't know if this is permanent or just something they are doing at certain times of the day ala some Kroger stores around here. It really isn't a big deal to me since I usually park on the side of the store with the main entrance, but I did find it odd that Randall's had closed off the other entrance since that's something I usually associate with Kroger!
Yeah, it's probably a staffing thing -- the few stores around here that have better staffing levels tend to have more balloons on display. I've even seen some stores bring back their staffed floral departments recently, though things are still pretty bad at my local store and most of the ones in Seattle and its immediate suburbs.
DeleteSafeway has permanently closed an entrance at most of their local stores, and it's always the one that's less convenient for people walking/biking/taking transit to the store that's left open. Yet another thing that really annoys me about Safeway these days...