August 2, 2010-Yesterday morning I visited my local Safeway store at Bay Street, since the Sunday August 1st ad had "Platinum Sweet Brentwood Corn Exclusively at Safeway" at Club Price of---6 for $1. I wanted to see what new gimmick this store 'produce section' had come up with this time.
The surcharge for $1.19 for shucking the corn have disappeared, someone must have turned them in on such an illegal practice. They still have the sign for "please no shucking" but they came out with a new one too:
The new posted sign is "Limit 6 Corn!" I didn't see that in the Safeway ad. The reason could be two-fold, number one corns sale is very popular selling points in this store, number two produce clerks cannot keep replenishing the corns stock since its too much work.
I have shopped at many Safeway stores in the City and this store have the worst produce in-stocks and clerks I ever encounter. Either the produce manager have no concept on what or how many to order and the clerks are very terrible to certain type of customers. Many of my buddies are constantly asking me why I am so obsessive with this produce section...because I worked almost half a century in jobs dealing with the public. If you cannot deal with customers, why take a job that makes you miserable; plus the customers is the ones that help paid your salary!
This morning I visited the Bay Street Safeway store and I observed an incident between the tall Causcian produce clerk and a elderly Oriental lady by the corns bin. The clerk was working at the other end of the produce section and he suddenly headed to the corns bin to tell the lady to stop picking corns from the middle of the display pile but from the top, because he said they are all the same and it might cause the pile to tip over. The clerk was incorrect in the statement that all corns are the same, since corns come in different shape and size. Majority of the customers would try to pick ones that are plumb, since there was no sign stating "picking is illegal." The lady was about 5' tall and the corns were stacked almost 6' high---why? I overheard that same clerk telling another clerk several weeks ago that he put out all the corns so he don't have to deal with it the rest of his shift. I watched as the lady can barely reach the top of the corn pile but she was afraid of that clerk as I watched her looking back at him. My buddies asked me why I didn't say anything to that foolish clerk...because I wanted to stay incognito to watch this clown.
I have observed this clown on many occasion treating Oriental customers very different than treating other ethnic customers. A Oriental man was sorting through plastic bags of grapes to make a larger bag, he told the man he cannot do that...these bags were not seal and some had bunch of rotten grapes in them. A Oriental lady was going through the boxes of cantaloupes to find whatever and he told her to stop making a mess of his display. Then one day I noticed a Caucasian lady was opening the plastic container holding strawberries and taking larger strawberries from other plastic containers to replace the smaller strawberries in her container---he saw it but said nothing. This is a lesson I learn from watching a local TV produce guy who said to always weigh a pint of strawberries to make sure it's really a pint, because sometime people do sample or take item from the container. I thought maybe he was a "ladies man" but then one day I noticed a African American man sorting through bags of cherries just as he scold the Oriental man for doing the same with grapes; this time the clerk was helping the man opening the bags. This clerk is a piece of work. I have only one dealing with him when I asked him if he had any yellow corns and his reply was a stern---white corns only. One of the other store clerk told me that store employers took all the yellow corns in the back because they were sweeter. In another store I asked if they had any yellow corns and the clerk would reply if they had any in the back he/she would bring some out or the shipment of yellow corns are usually limited.
I just love watching the customers buying 6 corns at one checkout clerk and then going back and buy another 6 corns at another checkout clerk. It meant the customers had to make numerous trip and the supply of corns would still be diminishing. Then the no shucking policy is another big joke...just look at the several corner City public trash cans---full of shucks and silks. As I left the store I watched a lady standing by the City trash shucking the husks, all because the Safeway clerks are too lazy to clean their own mess!
