Odd

The Wal-Mart in Raynham recently stopped carrying Cain’s mayonnaise.  Just… stopped.  It seems to have coincided with a change of store managers and modest subsequent reorganization of what went where.  (When I worked at a big convenience store chain they called it “programming,” which I always thought was funny terminology.)

Since that’s at least as popular as any other mayo available in the region, it doesn’t make a lot of sense.  I have to wonder if they got in a spat, didn’t get a sufficiently low price, didn’t fit with Wal-Mart’s IT systems, or what.  I keep forgetting to confirm whether they still carry other Cain’s products, and whether Cain’s is also out at the Plymouth store.  If they do, or it isn’t, all the stranger.  If they don’t, then probably one of those reasons.

Speaking of oddities, I long meant to blog about left-sided Wal-Mart entrances.

From the time I was a kid, I learned the “walk to the right, just like you’d drive” rule of pedestrian traffic.  If people tried harder to do that in stores, even when they are “the only one in the store,” things would flow more smoothly.

I noticed a long time ago that the entrance to Wal-Mart in Raynham was left-handed and felt completely unnatural.  You see a lot of people simply using the right side anyway, which causes traffic jams when people coming in the opposite direction try to comply with the signs and go through the left door.  Then I noticed it at Target in Taunton too!  Except there it’s more appropriate to the layout of the store.  Left feeds you directly up the main left aisle of the store, with the checkout area to the right.  At the Wal-Mart left is adjacent to the checkout and right feeds up a main aisle that’s the demarcation between grocery and the rest of the store.

To my great relief, I see the new Plymouth Wal-Mart is correctly designed, and it’s not a chain policy to be backward.  Just one more way in which the Plymouth store is superior.  But the Raynham store is still on my way home from the office rather than off in the other direction…

1. The one in Plymouth has Cain’s.

   Captcha is “problem.” Heh.

   Posted by Deb  on  07/01  at  02:14 PM

2. I always complain about that at my local Wal-mart as well, but I noticed last night that the other entrance is correct.  Both entrances have the “inner” door as an exit, and since all the checkouts are between them, I suppose I see their reasoning (don’t want to cause a big confusion with the traffic flow as the entering customers have to cross paths with the exiting ones), but it still frustrates me, especially when people apparently can’t follow directions on either set of doors.

   Posted by Robin S.  on  07/03  at  07:36 AM

3. All of the Wal-Marts I’ve been to are this way.  It’s really a function of how they return the carts.  If you go into the entrance on the right side of the store, it will “feel” correct, since the cart return area is on the outer wall, which is to the right.  If you go into the left side entrance, everything is backwards, since the outer wall, and hence the cart return area, will be on the left.

   I’ve also noticed that on the ones that are backwards that lots of people come in the “wrong” door, causing traffic jams (and lots of hostile stares from people who think *I’m* on the wrong side as I’m trying to get out).

   The only way to fix it would be to have a cart return entrance on the front of the store (which many Targets have), but this causes a problem with long lines of carts sticking out into the traffic lanes when they’re being returned to the store from the lot.  It would also mean having the carts taking up interior space, rather than being relegated to the outer “fringes” of the store.

   Posted by Aubrey Turner  on  07/12  at  03:48 PM

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