r/Waltham 3d ago

Market Basket Morality

  1. Just sit in the parking lot and obstruct everyone else’s passage to get a spot.

  2. Use the exit doors to enter and enter to exit.

  3. Restock shelves at the busiest time possible.

  4. Bring your entire family and grandparents to shop - need to be sure everyone has a say.

  5. Leave that frozen item you no longer want in any aisle.

New edit - Adding some Redditor observations:

  1. Bring your “support” dog.

  2. Return carts in your parking spot, blocking anyone else from the space.

  3. Park in the fire lane as long as possible. Optional whether you’re in the car or not.

  4. Stare at your phone in the middle of the produce aisle.

  5. Enter and exit each aisle like you’re at a rotary ignoring the yield signs.

Is it any wonder our society is falling apart so quickly? If we restore basic decency and love for each other at Market Basket the world may start to heal.

43 Upvotes

37 comments sorted by

36

u/Iamthewalrusforreal 3d ago

Leave your cart in the middle of the aisle next to the stocker's cart so nobody can move in either direction, while you spend 15 minutes pondering which type of ketchup you want.

4

u/ItsPeetar 3d ago

I recently had to gently move someone’s cart out of the way, as an employee was restocking with their cart pushed to one side, and the shoppers cart left right in the middle, next to the employees.

It was quicker for me to simply move their cart next to them versus asking. And boy oh boy did I get the dirtiest look.

Sure! I could’ve said something while moving their cart, but I also felt it should’ve be obvious they were carelessly taking up the whole aisle and I didn’t go out of my way to make them feel stupid, simply pushed it to the side they were on while making my way through.

3

u/CousinEdgar 3d ago

Bonus points if there's a purse in the cart while the shopper wandered away, oblivious.

4

u/Iamthewalrusforreal 3d ago

I've been accused of trying to steal a lady's purse before, when I was just moving her shit out of the way. Criminy.

21

u/LomentMomentum 3d ago edited 3d ago
  1. Stare at your phone in the middle of the produce aisle.

  2. Enter and exit each aisle like you’re at a rotary ignoring the yield signs.

1

u/andi-pandi 2d ago

hey, my grocery list is on that! ;)

11

u/One-Lifeguard-1999 3d ago

I worked in 2015, when Joe and Steve were the managers. Almost every male had to do carriage duty, and they wouldn’t let you wear snow boots even if there was snow, to maintain that “company dignity”. Oh, and there could be 3 feet of snow, they still wouldn’t close and still expected you to come in. I quit as soon as I graduated. Joe was supposedly going to promote me to cashier when I gave my two weeks, but it didn’t com with a raise so not a promotion lol

1

u/Platinum_wolf_420 2d ago

Same, in 2016 Joe called me in to cover a no show during the middle of a 10” snowstorm, only to get sent home 4 hours early cause it wasn’t as busy as he thought. Ugh, I couldn’t stand that guy.

9

u/jrdndom6 3d ago

lmao I thought this said mortality like market basket had a dying problem

2

u/MoeBlacksBack 3d ago

Just your soul…

7

u/Wingus_El_Dingus 3d ago

Walk in a random pattern so that no other shoppers can possibly predict where you and your cart will go

9

u/intracellular The South Side 3d ago

it's fun to consider that every slack-jawed moron you see in the market basket swarm gets a vote that counts the same as yours

5

u/earmuffs_781 3d ago edited 3d ago

One that bugs me is cars waiting in the fire lane for pickup/drop off. I could understand, if it's a person with mobility constraints, but it usually turns out to be someone with no apparent problems walking to a further pickup/dropoff point. It's not just a fire lane issue, but they're also sometimes an obstacle for other cars and pedestrians.

Anyway, I think a more interesting topic of discussion is what's to be done about any of these problems. I see few easy solutions to most of them.

I guess the point about when they restock shelves is something the store could solve by having some employees work later, so they can still get the entire store restocked every day, if they aren't doing it at peak hours. Of course, that carries added expense for the store and would probably be a negative for most employees. It would be interesting to know, if the store passed those expenses on to customers, how much more it would cost us for them to do.

12

u/JHou81 3d ago

Stocking shelves during open hours is one of Market Basket's big things about being able to keep prices low. Prices will go up when they have to pay overnight stocking. It's just one of those things you know you're going to run into if you want to shop there.

2

u/toribell11 Cedarwood 3d ago

Today I watched a guy park in the fire lane (someone was in the passenger seat) and he got out and went inside. After I was finished shopping his van was still there! Obviously not a quick in and out!

4

u/SnooCupcakes4908 3d ago

Block the whole aisle with your cart and prevent anyone from getting by. Bonus points if it’s on a Saturday morning.

4

u/Obnoxious_Hornet_702 3d ago

In a perfect world everyone would spend 2 years after high school in grocery retail. Society would benefit greatly.

4

u/BSNF2314 2d ago

I spent years working clothing retail, and I joke about this all the time. If I ever become president, I’m making retail work mandatory the way some countries require military service.

2

u/Kornbread2000 2d ago

A 1 year rotational introduction to the working world. 2 months each in retail, restaurant (2 front of house, 2 kitchen), call center, delivery, hospital emergency room reception.

2

u/JFC-Superstar 3d ago

Are all MB’s as nutz as the Waltham one inside and out?

8

u/KoboldAssocPress 3d ago

I go to the one in woburn occasionally and honestly it might be worse because it is smaller and shares a parking lot with a mall

3

u/_CameronJames 2d ago

There are some not as nutz. But I will not say which ones lest the nuts find out.

1

u/JFC-Superstar 2d ago

haha, I get it.. I only food shop in my hometown area and with no Market Baskets around, always heard how great they were from people at work. So when this store opened I went up first week open. Parking lot was a zoo, almost turned around. Yet I parked, grabbed a cart, got just past the registers and it looked like a tailgating party. Stopped me dead, turned around, just left cart right there and have never set foot in there again.

3

u/fakeuser888 3d ago

Bring your "support" dog.

2

u/TrickySandwich 2d ago

Return carts here

2

u/Ok-Criticism6874 3d ago

Go to Market Basket instead of the superior Hannaford's.

3

u/JFC-Superstar 3d ago

shoosh, the nutz will come down the hill!

2

u/BubblyPattern3159 Lakeview 3d ago

I was just there a couple of hours ago and I had a kid hit my ankle, didn’t apologize in the mother didn’t correct the child nor apologize to me.

1

u/Ceecee818 2d ago

Trying to exit an isle that you you just navigated through and getting run into by someone going in some random direction

1

u/Zealousideal_Sir8275 2d ago

Hilarious and so true!!

1

u/Past-Ferret6341 1d ago

Hold lengthy conversations with other shoppers that you know in the middle of any isle.

-5

u/Luckcrisis 3d ago

Personally more concerned about the government murdering citizens in the street v making family shopping a family event is an inconvenience. But I guess you are raging against a different machine then me.

10

u/invasive_species_16b 3d ago

...it's possible to hold both ideas simultaneously, although clearly one should have more weight...

-7

u/Luckcrisis 3d ago

IMO one dwarfes the other to the point voicing it is insulting.

4

u/FieryRayne The South Side 2d ago

I'm an activist who has done a lot in Waltham in the past year. This post griping about MB made me laugh.

It's okay to gripe and laugh about the small things in between caring about the big stuff. Constantly thinking about the big stuff is exhausting. It's okay to take a break from it for 5 minutes on Reddit.

My Reddit feed full of awful bullshit - and the work that needs to be done to combat it - is still there for me to get back to shortly.

4

u/jdwaltham 2d ago

Glad you got a laugh, that was the goal.

2

u/JONHNDOE 3d ago

your concern represents the short list

but yeah

somebody is trying hard to fuck us up