Adventures in Albertsons

First of all, I was extremely disappointed to see that the nice Albertsons-SavOn by our new house is closing. Sad...I wonder what other grocery stores are nearby.

But to get to the main point, the nice Albertsons-SavOn by our current house is also closing. The signs went up this weekend. I figgured this had to be something about the sale of Albertsons to that other company from back east and that they would eventually reopen under a new name or something, but no. I come to find out today that only the _nice_ Albertsons-SavOn by our house is closing, the _old crappy_ Albertsons across from Target is not closing. You all remember Amanda's adventure in the old Albertsons? Dread about what shopping is going to be like until we move.

Now why the hell would they close a nice large Albertsons-SavOn combo that gets decent business and keep open an old, dingy, small Albertsons whose parkinglot is always empty? My only guess is that some bean counter at corporate who never saw the stores in person decided that two Stores within 2 miles of each other couldn't coexist so lets close the one with more overhead even though it is much nicer and makes more money.

Fast forward to today. I go to buy some groceries on my way home from work. I have to go to the old Albertsons since the nice one only has clearance items and doesn't have anymore fresh meat. First, when I get there, they are out of shopping carts. After parading around the weirdly laid out store in the crowds cramming everything into my little hand cart, I'm finally able to check out. I get to the car and realize that they charged me $6 each for 2 6packs of propel that were advertised at 5/$15.

I go back in to get that adjusted and wait at the courtesy desk for 30 minutes before I am taken care of. The first 15 minutes are spent waiting for a clerk to even acknowledge that there are people waiting at the desk. The next 15 minutes are spent waiting for the 2 people in front of me to be helped. When they finally got around to helping me we walked back to the shelf and the price on the shelf certainly said 5/$15, but the deal ended on 3/3. Today is 3/6 - hello - take down your signs already then. They did refund my money and gave me the propels for free, but only after wasting 30 minutes of my time. Was that much money back really worth that amount of time?

Then when I get home, I drop and break the jar of marinade I was planning on using with the meat I just bought. Back to the store again I dreaded.