I'm not normally one to wax rhapsodic about something as prosaic as a grocery store, but after my last little jaunt to my local Market Street, I just have to say how impressed I am. Everyone working there is friendly, which is a nice change from the surly service received elsewhere (I'm looking at you, Kroger...). When we first moved here I tried out all the local grocery stores and decided that Market Street was my favorite, but for the last few months I've been trying to conserve gas and to cut down on my errands meant going to that awful big box retailer of evil. Today I only needed groceries, so no WalMart. I had forgotten how nice Market Street is. All sorts of gourmet and specialty and organic stuff and prices that are, in many cases, even better than WalMart's. Organic milk, for example, is a dollar (or maybe dollar and a half) cheaper... 2 liter Diet Coke is 13 cents less... And not only do they not seem to believe in the current trend of making the customers do most of the work themselves, they do
everything at checkout for you, from unloading your basket (does
anyone else still do this?) to bagging and placing the bags in the cart to loading your stuff into your car. And I have never had anyone be unpleasant to me there. I could actually not hate grocery shopping in an environment lie that. Oh, and there are always plenty of cashiers... who will come and get you if they are free and they see you waiting. Really, I love the place. Who knew a grocery store could put me in such a good mood? I just hope that their corporate masters aren't evil or I will be very disappointed. All the people I've talked to who work there say it's a great place to work, so maybe it really is a rare example of business being done centered on the customer instead of the bottom line.
