I know a lot of us go to these places because of the low prices...I know I do...but one day just find some place to sit and just watch the people in these places. I cannot beleive how rude people are anymore in these types of stores. Push, shove, run into or over, and not say a frickin word. Kid's running around like wild thugs knocking things over and not picking them up. Not to mention most of these people should be on display at a freak show or something! I am trying to decide if following with the heard for that little extra savings is worth putting up with what that herd drops for you to step in!

I would just like to know if there is anyone that can really give some positive thoughts about either of these besides the low prices which sometimes are not as low as you think. Also they are not known for treating their own very well either!

Anyone?

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Oh Yah.....and where is it written that the fatter the woman the tighter her dirty white/brownish stretch/cellulite showing stretch pants have to be.....with the t-shirts that do not quite fit and the bottom belly roll hangs out!!!!! AAhhggggg UUrrrpp

DT - Let's not forget the classic sweat pants without underwear. I do not want to know your religion lads and ladies and I certainly don't want to know exactly why you sound like a reindeer when you walk.

Those stores -- and Cub etc. -- are so wrong on so many levels, I don't know where to begin.

Ya...and how tight and low can overly plump young...and even old girls wear there jeans.......Is it a contest to see how many extra bulges they can create by wearing to tight hip crawlers with to short t-shirts. And please God don't bend over were I can see...I don't care to see your floss and ugly ass tatoo in the crack of your back! WHAT ARE PEOPLE THINKING! Do they think fat all tightly rolled up is sexxy or what? It just looks like an over-stuffed Taco Bell borrito with stuff hangin out of it! Gross!

A LOT of low income, uneducated families shop at Winco because the prices are very low. The problem is you have the hispanic famlies who bring their 10 kids with them and let them run wild.
Oh and one other thing DO NOT EVER GET FOOD OUT OF THOSE ROUND BINS THAT CONTAIN STUFF LIKE CANDY, CHIPS, NUTS. I see little kids picking their noses, fingers down their butts, Walk over to those bins, and grap some nuts out of those bins WITH THEIR BARE HANDS!!

Seems just about everything is available in bulk these days. Has anyone taken the grease pen and written "boogers" on the ingredient list?

Boogers and Brownie bites in your trail mix! Yummmm

Only thing I can think of grosser than that is the pork until you puke food bar at Izzys. After the second time seeing some dipshit kid sampling the food with the spoon to dish it up with then put it back I swore never to eat at buffet lines ever again. Oh yah and their mom is picking their nose and using their bare hands to grab a fistfull of whatever! NO CLASS!

Izzy's is pizza, plus a WHOLE lot more.

Izzy's....this decades Sizzler.....E. Coli waiting to happen!

The prices are much lower, but after shopping at these two brands, I question whether it was worth it. Winco is notorious for long checkout lines, using the double check-out system, one checker alternating between two lines. It is almost a science trying to figure out which line is going to move faster. My experience with Wal-Mart is it depends on the time of day. Sometimes you can get out, sometimes it takes forever. Like when they have only a couple check-out people working, but while you were shopping you saw atleast 15 people stocking, and a of course atleast a couple of people "greeting". I hate Wal-Mart greeters. Just me.

I shop both Winco and Wal-Mart and agree the customers are rude.

However, I don't think it can be isolated to those two or even just a few stores in general.

Common courtesy seems to be a thing of the past. It doesn't matter much if you are at some hoity toity, stick your nose in the air store like Nordstrom or at K-Mart, most people these days are just plain rude.

One issue/reason people don't say "excuse me" when they darn near bowl you over in their attempt to get 1 person if front of you, might be that they DON'T KNOW ENGLISH.

That's one of my pet peeves.

This is America. Drivers license manuals, signs in stores, voters guides, ATM's etc should be printed in ENGLISH ONLY. You want to read it, learn English.

I have the burning desire to punch the snot out of WAMU's ATM's every time I use one and have to choose English.

Whoa, Bill......Breathe, breathe, breathe, breathe....

There that's better. Blood pressure is now back down below 200/180!

Or any language at all, Bill. This whole "universal symbolism" that has taken over is insane. How many women still wear skirts? I am bummed out for any embarrassed little girl who ends up in the wrong bathroom looking for Mom because she wasn't given a simple, "Women."

An aircraft with a sticker that shows a stick figure losing an arm is not going to make as much sense as a simple bright red, "Danger Propeller." "Wet Floor" has been replaced by what looks like a crashing figure skater. "Walk" is a moseying white guy and "Don't Walk" is the red hand of, presumably, a Native, who apparently wants to save your carpetbagging keester from getting mowed.

Cars are the worst offenders, often you have a foreign culture with a whole other "stick figure" language. The only vehicle that ever did this and made sense was the Volkswagen Rabbit. The "two bunnies humping" was, without a doubt, fuel injection.

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I will never shop at a chain again, unless it is an emergency. A retailer better know me by name, be polite, go the extra mile and appreciate my business or I will not be back. A store that tolerates rude customers does not deserve a dime either. The business must be good at what they do and know what they are selling.

I get my groceries, movies, clothes, you name it, at independently owned small businesses. Some are local chains, I will grant you, but a Burgerville is not going to kill you with the same efficient grace as a drive-through of death and indigestion. Screw the scab outfits, or the retail zoos, for a few more dollars, there is a real person, a neighbor, who wants your business. IMHO.

There were a lot of take off of the VW “Farfegnugen

Most of them had some derivative of "fu*in" in them. Some were pretty funny!

Funkengroovin' must be the Bootsymobile.

Yeah! I saw one with the little stick guy bent over and it said Fuk*npukin!

I like how VW has integrated not only elements of German, but other languages as well, like the Scirocco, derived from an Italian word for desert wind, Taureg, named for a rugged North African tribe, and Golf, an English word known the world over. I think that clever integration of the world's languages is cool for a car maker that serves the planet. In a nerdy way.

Perhaps, you would see less immigrants shoving and bustling if their neighborhoods had ethnic shops to serve them. Of our most recent immigrants, I think that only the Vietnamese and other southeast Asians have made a real tangible community in Portland. Personally, I love to eat and shop on that little stretch of Sandy that has so much imported flavor. Other ethnicities will too, I am sure, I see it here and there. Having done retail, I'm not sure everyone arrives here rude. I think they learn from us. :0)

This may sound gross but it is the absolute best way to pick the place who wants your business and a place you will like visiting!
Visit and grade the overall cleanliness of the facilities! If they are a "Shithole" and just a complete mess then that speaks volumes for their business. If i would not us the facilities I don't shop there. IE back to Wal-mart and Winco....Nastiest Men's romms on the planet versus say Target and Albertson's or Safeway! Fred's is usually not bad either. And also I do not hear the negative manner about them in which employee's are treated like at Wal-mart and Winco!

Shithole for bathroom = shitty business that does not care about it's customers!

Darktemper, I'm sure there was no pun intended, but using the term Shithole for the bathroom, that's funny!!

Glad someone picked on my sad attempt at Wit! After the 30 hour shift I was a little groggy!

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I Know, I Know...before you guys say it I do not have an excuse for every other day! HA...beat you to it!

The Fred Meyers bathroom in Beaverton used to Scare the hell out of me as kid. Not only were the bathrooms very dirty, but the people using them were very scary! I remember on numerous occasions using the fred Meyers bathrooms and you had the guy on the toilet screaming at the top of his lungs. Not sure if he had a really bad case of chronic diarhhea or he was just a looney, regardless he scarred me for life. To this day I will never use the Fred Meyer Bathrooms, I just learned to hold it.
FRED MEYER BATHROOM USERS..........BEWARE, ENTER AT YOUR OWN RISK!
Plus I don't know about you, but i have stage fright using the Urnals when people are using them right next to me. I start to tense up and can't go until the person besides me leaves. Its weird, thats why I like to use the stalls and shut the door behind me.

I am so glad that I don't have to do that. (Use urinals)

The trade-off is that wee have long lines to wait in sometimes, and also can't just stand up and go against something like a tree or a car, let alone in a bottle while in the car, even if we're not driving.

Warning! Big pale full moon just outside the tent!

HOMOPHOBE!

So you are the one peeing all over the seat!

Oh and Merkin......thanks for the visual on that! LMAO
Could be worse...you could be in a boat out fishing with no bucket and have someone hold your arms while you hang it over the port side! LOL

If I were in a different income tax bracket I would shop somewhere other than Winco. But here in lies the simple economics of this situation as simply as I can put it. If you take $100 dollars and spend it at Winco versus Safeway you will walk away with a little over double what you would get at Safeway for the same money. Simple!

Rumor mill is that Alberston's is pulling out of the Oregon marketplace. So lets see for chains we have Safeway, Freddies, Winco, Food4Less, Grocery Outlet, Roth's IGA, SavAlot, and others.

I would shop at Trader Joe's and even WholeFoods if they were located in the Salem area. At least Trader Joe's is a bit inexpensive.

For the record I have only ever stepped into one WalMart ever. I loathe WalMart with a Passion. I love however what Winco offers. There clientele leaves something to be desired but that is just a fact I am going to have to deal with if I want to save money and eat for the whole month instead of just 10-15 days.

I would suggest those that are highly annoyed by the clientele at certain stores to shop at other times at said store to lesson the peak hours full on "Idiot/White Trash/Welfare for poopin' babies out like there is no tommorrow and I don't know what the fuck birthcontrol is factor"

I did my monthly grocery trip to Winco on Saturday and I mentioned to my brother how it was a whole lot less than the average circus. We came to the conclusion that you should probally avoid these type of places on the first weekend of everymonth so you can at least walk out at least feeling like your not gonna go postal on the clientele.

Oh and the converstions some of these people have in public are absolute comedy. At least I can laugh and at least do some people watching. Sometimes though I am on a roll and in a mood where I just don't care what comes out of my mouth and verbally go off on these people in a pretty boistorous manner. Very few times have I ever gotten even a dirty look from someone.

New Seasons is the best in Portland. Sure, I'll admit, I have friends who work there. I love the really good sample table that is waiting every single day with something new. Yes, this is an even better outfit from the brains behind the original Nature's grocery stores. Above all that, the biggest reasons I would recommend New Seasons are simple. It is a nice store with nice folks, it is always clean and orderly and they focus on providing quality products with local goods a top priority. By buying meat, produce and other stuff in a locally focused place, your money stays here, which to me, is the only smart way to consume at all. A couple bucks more sometimes, but you won't feel like a thousand Chinese factory children made your lunch, just farmers in our valleys and hills and fishermen at the coast.

I'm a Winco shopper as well. I'll venture out to the more pricey stores for some items, but the bulk of it needs to be at the lowest cost that makes sense.

(Won't touch Wal-Mart for any reason though. I don't need those things, so I don't need them cheap!)

I've a coupla Win-co tips to pass along!

First, take your kids or a friend, or some other family member. You will need them.

Split up and hit the various parts of the store. More than two carts does not make sense, so two groups only. One group will get done before the other, so get into the line.

Ideally, the other group gets done in time for the two to load up on the checkout belt.

(This annoys people, but it's a low brow store. I could personally care less. It's everyone for themselves.)

The fact is, no matter when you go to the store, the management knows the average flow for that time of day. They also know the max time the 95th percentile will wait before avoiding the store.

So, you are gonna wait, even at 3am on a Sunday. (Yes, I've tried!)


This is pretty mean, but there is another tactic that will get a few more checkers into service ASAP:

Basically, go grab a cart and load it with a bunch of stuff. Pick canned foods, whatever. You won't be buying any of it. Be sure and only choose stuff that will not be impacted from sitting around. Let the late nighters reshelve it.

Instead of splitting the two groups to quickly grab items and placehold in line, one group is gonna load the cart, wait in line, then get frustrated, then take it to the customer service department.

Bring the cart up and ask them, "Would you keep track of this for me? I'm sorry, but the wait is too long!" Then leave the cart full of goods and walk out of the store. Move quickly and right out of the door. It's a wise idea to do this with people that do not shop there often.

Within 5 minutes, there will be plenty of checkers every last time. Enter group two, now ready to take their place in one of the new lines, or will enjoy a significantly lower wait.

Brutal, but done once in a while, it significantly improves the wait time! It's also very thearaputic to boot. Just don't over do it.

Yeah, I'm a jerk sometimes, but I really hate this kind of managed cost cutting crap. Paying enough people to keep waits down to a reasonable minimum does not impact the cost of the food significantly. I know this, they know this, so I force the issue on occasion as a reality check.

Sue me.

And there we have it folks. The art and science of Winco shopping! PDXRadio should have a feature on the discovery channel!

I can just invision Merkin, Chicken, and Missing hosting a show about how to circumnavigate your local Winco. What to avoid and how to score the really good bargains by taking the labels off of the canned foods and then getting them to discount them to you!

We have kind of a wierd combination of stores we use reqularly for groceries. Since we have our two sons STILL living with us, and they eat LOTS, we need to buy LOTS of food. But we don't have LOTS of money! So, here's our routine:
First, COSTCO for large quantities of staples like chicken, stew meat, toilet paper, bread, etc. We resist with all our might the urge to buy all that other stuff they have.

Next, across the way to Winco to get the rest of our groceries. Yes, it's a chaotic place, but once you develop your routine there, you can get 'er done fairly quickly. And the excercise is good for us.

Last, since it's close to home, sometimes we hit Trader Joe's for certain things ie; wine, healthy snacks. Not much here, too expensive.

So, we experience the whole societal range, from RV driving soccer Moms, to the vast middle and lower class, to the granola naturals.

Then we go home, unload the entire haul, and take a nap!

This is a once a month process.

Okay....ultimate wierdness.

Go to Winco or Wal-Mart like at 2:00am......there is a whole other world of people that exist right under the top layer....the night crawlers! LOL Can you say "Freaks and Geeks!" OMG! They should do a National Geographic for the subcultural aspect of those places!

BTW....words of wisdom.....stay out of the facilities at those hours....you don't wanna go in there!

I still would rather NOT consume preservatives and other gnarly things...and I would still rather NOT give my hard earned cash to a place that pays their employees like crap (walmart) without healthcare.

Trader Joe's it is. Good food, good prices.

albertsons can't "technically" pull out of oregon as they are owned by Supervalu, a company with a strong presence in Oregon.

Costco has the longest lines of any store I shop at. Yes, there are DEEP discounts on some things, but the produce there is crap sometimes. I've found things at Fred Meyer priced comepetively and also stuff priced higher than what one can find at Frys sometimes.

This might be a good time to look underneath the "local" brands and see who they really are...

Fred Meyer...owned by Cincinnati-based Kroger
QFC...owned by Kroger
Albertsons...owned by Minnesota-based SuperValu
Safeway...owned by Bay Area-based Safeway, Inc.
Winco...Winco is a Boise, Idaho company
Trader Joe's...California owned
Wal-Mart...#1 grocery chain in US-Arkansas based

Thar Ya Is....Red Neck Centrall....Wal-Mart.

BTW....Two products I will pay Safeway prices for because of great quality:
Produce and Deli-counter Meats!

All others suck! Not much you can do to a can of corn however and two for on at winco over safeway is a no brainer!

still would rather NOT consume preservatives and other gnarly things...and I would still rather NOT give my hard earned cash to a place that pays their employees like crap (walmart) without healthcare.

Trader Joe's it is. Good food, good prices.


Yeah I agree, those Poor Door greaters at Walmart are mostly elderly men in their late 80's who are just about ready to croak! The sad part is, they don't have a penny to their name because they have been working at Walmart for the last 15 years.

"they don't have a penny to their name because"

. . . because Reagan's trickle down theory didn't work.

Darktemper:
"..the night crawlers! LOL Can you say "Freaks and Geeks!" OMG! They should do a National Geographic for the subcultural aspect of those places!"

Hey! I resemble that remark!
I'm a total geek/freak and night-owl. I might be able to pass for "normal" though,if you just saw me walking along.


"BTW....words of wisdom.....stay out of the facilities at those hours....you don't wanna go in there!"

Yea! Ya might bump into ME! :-p
Well,Not at Wal-mart...But perhaps at Winco.
In the middle of the night,there's hardly anybody in there..but sometimes the few who are..uhh..how shall we say, "make up for it" ?

I think Jason, Freddy, and the entire cast from the Hills have Eyes movie shops during those hours! Usually it's the "Normans" watching the wierdo's but during that time my spidey sense tells me that I am the wierdo and am being watched instead!
Serious about that subcultural show though.....would be interesting to do that!

"Portland After Dark.....Not For The Faint of Heart!"