You sometimes wonder how a place stays in business, or how some people can even hold a job.  Yesterday I went into a grocery store that is part of a large regional chain with a short list of items to pick up, and one of them was for a can of hominy.  So when I got to the aisle with the canned vegetables I started searching for the hominy.  Most places usually have a limited selection of brands for it anyway, so there will be scant shelf space devoted to it. 

I searched and I searched, then I went back to the beginning of the section and looked still again.  Couldn’t find any.  Since hominy is corn, I took a lot of time to peruse the corn section very closely.  Still no joy.  Now I need to relate to you that this particular chain of grocery stores caters heavily to the Yuppie class.  They are so profitable, you see…spending inordinate sums for unnecessary things that are overpriced, so it’s not unusual to see real things in limited selections in this place.   But to completely eliminate a product is very discomfiting.

But just to make sure, I went to the Customer Service counter and asked the man who was very busy entering code numbers on a keyboard, if they stopped carrying canned hominy.  He stopped and thought for about 10 seconds and then realized that he wasn’t sure.  So he picked up the intercom phone and called somebody who promptly arrived in about 30 seconds.  This nice gentleman knew right away where they had secreted the hominy and led me over to aisle 4 where the canned beans are stocked.  You know, kidney beans, pinto beans, baked beans, etc.  And sure enough, nestled right in amongst the beans was a (small) layer of cans of hominy.  I told him that  I was puzzled over the placement and was expecting to find it with the corn, or at least on the same aisle as the vegetables, but it didn’t faze him at all.  He saw nothing wrong with stacking this product with the beans.

Now I realize that we are no longer an agrarian society that largely knows nothing about growing food.  Many people in the cities have never even seen a cow in their entire lives and have no idea that’s where their hamburger comes from.  But I really, truly expect people who are in the grocery business to know the basics of food products and what they are made of.  No matter what line of business you chose to be in, it’s necessary to know everything you can about your particular product.  And when you’re new at it, then you should be devoting time to learning as much as you can.

This particular chain is part of a grocery monolith where every decision is made a thousand miles away by people who are a dozen levels removed from the stock clerk in the local store.  So the decision to put the hominy with the beans was made by the guy who lays out the floor plan for every store with sales incentives and profitablilty behind every decision.  He really knows how to motivate people to buy.  But he doesn’t know that hominy is not a bean!  And apparently nobody else in that particular food chain does either.  You would think that somebody in one of the stores would point out the inadvisability of shelving them there and suggest that just maybe, sales of that item would improve if you put it where it should be.  But no, the whole outfit is brainwashed into thinking that “somebody” knows what they are doing, and I fear that a large percentage of them don’t even know the difference between bean plant and a corn stalk.

It leads me to wonder, how many sales of that item were lost because people like me couldn’t find it?  How many complete store visits were lost because the next time someone needed a can, they recalled that this place doesn’t (appear to) carry it and they went to another store for their entire food purchase for the week?  Multiply that by the number of other mislaid products, and you can see what I’m getting at.  What the stockholders should really be concerned about is that  employees are getting promoted into decision-making positions who don’t know squat about food. 

That will begin the slow process of rot-from-within that will eventually cause the business to wither and die.  Look around at your area fire departments and rescue squads.  Do you see people getting promoted into decision-making positions who don’t understand the basics of figuring btu production per cubic foot, or how to read an EKG?  It’s the same thing….eventually the core rots out and you’re no longer putting out fires and rescuscitating victims.  You’re just standing closer to the action than the public while you all watch what’s going on.  Am I right?

While we still know what’s going on here, we’d better get this equipment checked out now.  I need to get the coffee started.  It’ll be ready when we get back to the day room.