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Our Grocery Store: The Good and The Bad

Monday Sep 29, 2008

Last Saturday I was very pleased to see the headline in my newspaper that the grocery store my wife and I go to (Colruyt) is the cheapest in Belgium, even cheaper than some of the discounters such as Aldi or Lidl. That reinforces my point of view that we should continue shopping there, even though my wife does not really like it. Granted the shopping experience is not as nice as Carrefour or Delhaize, but price is king for me.

Now I don't know whether many people read that headline and decided to try Colruyt, but there were a lot more people in the store than usual on a Saturday morning, even taking into account it was the end of the month.

So far the good part...

Here is where my frustration kicks in. When we finished our shopping we arrived at the cash registers, and what we found there was quite a disappointment. Quite quickly I realised that the employees operating the registers were not really going at it at the usual speed. Upon closer inspection we realised that ALL of the employees were either new or job students, meaning that the speed of processing a customer went down dramatically. Whilst I understand that all employees need to be trained, I think it's a very bad idea to deploy all new employees around the busiest time of the week.

One can definitely argue that it's our spare time, and waiting an additional 10 or 15 minutes is not the end of the world. And it is not, I agree. But what annoys me the most, and this is the case in all similar situations, is where I see inefficiency such as this, thus having without a doubt an influence on the overall customer satisfaction.

What are your views on this?

[1] Comments

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Posted at 05:45PM Sep 29, 2008 by Marc Dierens in Personal
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well speaking as someone who has experience in trying to get enough staff into our stores on Saturdays....sometimes the problem is due to ourselves (the shopping public I mean). We all want to be able to go shopping on Saturdays and preferably also on Sundays...but not many of us agree with working on these days. We sometimes had no choice but to put only newbies and job students in the store because yet another one left the job because "it's too hard on the family to work Saturdays" So you're left with people having to work more Saturdays because others quit their jobs (thus putting extra stress on those people who stay...which might result in them searching new jobs also) and hiring newbies and extra job students. Anyways...you see the circle here ? It's really not easy from a storekeepers point of view to both keep his personnel and his customers happy.
But on a lighter note...we like Colruyt too and yes you're wife is correct it doesn't have the Carrefour bling bling attitude. But for that kind of shopping one can better go to...euhm let's say New York. Colruyt is by far very price competitive and in the end that's what we all like :)
Suggestion : try to order online. It works wonderfull at Colruyt (special cash register when you collect your groceries ! not the normal busy ones in the store)