Shopping is a Science We’ll Never Master

Checkout lane 10 was the only lane open and had a line of shoppers extending six carts out, each one loaded. My cart made it seven. I was buying two items.

Suddenly, at the opposite end of the checkout lanes, the light for lane one blinked on, causing a cart-banging sprint by the three ahead of me plus four others who appeared from nowhere. I was now eighth in line and the original line had already refilled.

Having 10 checkout lanes is a great convenience in a large department store. They just need to have clerks operating them. The consumer science majors managing these stores must have missed the class where the importance of staffing was discussed.

And those convenient self-checkouts? They can take longer. At least it seems that way for me. I always do something out of the correct sequence so have to start over. If there are four stations, often at least one will be down for repair. Self-checkout is more intimidating than a regular line because there’s always an attendant watching to make sure I’m not stealing anything. Hey, I’m just trying to figure out how to do this.

The attendant might not be just monitoring for theft. They could be looking for people good at checking out so they can be offered the dream job of operating their own checkout lane at that store.

The super-sized stores usually include a grocery department and that’s often the main obstacle to checking out. Do you want to be behind someone who has two weeks’ worth of groceries for a family of six with three kids in tow? You hope they don’t go through several credit or debit cards before writing a check.

Shopping is evolutionary, changing with technological advances that constantly require us to learn new ways to purchase merchandise. And this has accelerated due to those pesky consumer science majors who know how to manipulate us.

First, they know we’re Americans who buy stuff, lots of stuff. We pack our attics, basements and closets first. When it spills over to the garage, the cars take up residence outside. We even buy sheds to store more or we rent space at storage facilities. These things are often stored for years until our kids toss it all away when we die.

Membership warehouses demonstrate how we can be trained to shop. First, you pay for the privilege of shopping there by buying a membership. It’s sort of like a hunting license, allowing you to search for what you want. In fact, the consumer scientists call it treasure-hunt shopping. There are no store maps. Products are not organized like most department stores. Merchandise can be spread all over and is moved often.

This gets people to shop longer and buy more. Huge carts help enable this. The managers of these stores know you’d be embarrassed to check out with two small items in a huge cart. The prices are often the lowest around but still, it’s a warehouse. How often have you forgotten what you came to buy and just ended up browsing and buying random things?

Did you really need that seven pound can of baked beans? And those yellow lawn chairs? You bought new ones last year and you know you still have them somewhere. But you can’t find them because you can’t remember which shed you stored them in.

Many stores today offer discounts you earn by shopping with them often. “Loyalty” is a term often associated with this. Those discounts are sometimes difficult to figure out and they often expire just before you need them.

If it was a discount card (coupon) you received in the mail, you will surely forget it at homeor the clerk will show that it is expired. Sometimes you have to spend a minimum amount to get the discount. Store identification is hugely important. As an example, you can instantly identify the place that offers storewide discounts of 11%.

Coupons seemed like free money when I was a kid (my mom always pronounced them as “kewpons”). Maybe it was a Norwegian thing. Today, coupons are an entire industry. And the consumer scientists are there to help. You can count on it. I’ve mostly given up on coupon clipping. I read newspapers online now and coupons are usually not included, probably because no one would print them out.

All of these gimmicks are designed to get you into the store but make discounts complicated enough that you’ll give up and just pay full price. It might come down to what you value most – your time or your money.

In my youth, pennies had enough value to make them worth picking up from sidewalks. Now stores have “take a penny, leave a penny” trays to help finish some transactions or avoid a pocket full of change. Today you might have to pay to have your containers of pennies counted by a machine. 

Buying online has its own benefits and issues. You can’t physically analyze merchandise, so you don’t always get what you expect. Not long ago, our usual grocery store was out of Kellogg’s Variety Pack cereal, the little single-serving boxes which are a favorite of Catherine’s mother Char. So, an online order for them was placed.

The Rice Krispies were tasteless and they didn’t snap, crackle or pop. The use-by date was September 2022.