I work at my local Meijer as a greeter. I do not like my job. The only reason I am still working there is because the pay is actually quite good. After a while, I check my wheelchair’s clock and notice that it is 11:00. Finally, after 4 hours of saying the same two sentences hundreds of times, it was time for my lunch break. I start looking around the store for something to eat and eventually settle on a plastic cup of noodles in the produce section. I was unable to use the store-provided microwave in the break area at the time because it was just slightly out of reach, so I could not eat anything that required being heated up. While it is a bit difficult to grab from the shelf, I ended up just barely being able to reach it after a few attempts to position my wheelchair the right way. It has got to be lined up almost perfectly parallel to the display so that I can have the most reach possible.
After I obtained the plastic cup of noodles, I set it down in my lap between my legs and drove to the checkout lane to pay for the item. I hate the checkout lane. It is so narrow that I am unable to safely back out of it, even with no shoppers behind me. Is that not a fire safety hazard or at least an ADA violation?
The whole space seems like it was designed with profits primarily in mind, all of these candy bars and random trinket line two improvised shelves placed on each side of the customer, that is what makes me so angry about it. None of this has to be here, the congestion of customers in self-checkout areas flowed completely fine without all these extra items, twists, and turns preceding them.
That is another problem I have with these, if a store wants to sell something to me by adding a few extra shelves before checkout, that is fine in my opinion. However, if the architects of a store’s floor plan are arbitrarily increasing the distance required by a customer to purchase their items and then filling that extra space with merchandise, that seems a bit deceitful in my book. It just appears to be another psychological trick supermarkets are trying to employ to make more money.
After I finally reach the self-checkout register, I have to once again move my chair and body around to a certain orientation in order to properly use its display. Then, I grab the container of pasta from my lap and scan the item, which shows up in all-capital letters as a “SALAD.”
After I scan the “SALAD,” I leave the checkout area through its exit-way, which is considerably wider and easier to maneuver around in with my chair than its entrance. Then, I head over to the store’s break area to eat my lunch. The lid to the plastic container ended up being incredibly difficult to open. No matter how hard I poked, pried, and pondered, I could not find a way to open it.
I eventually figured out that there was enough space between the lid and body of the container to stick a fork in-between the two and pop off the former that way. The only problem with that plan was that the plasticware in the break area was stored in a location that I could not immediately reach, resulting in me having to move my chair in all sorts of funky ways. By the end of the whole thing, I had to arch my back and reach my hand out so much that I was in a substantial amount of pain. Everything ached, and I just wanted to eat.
I got back to my table, popped open the lid, and ate the “SALAD” in the remaining five minutes of my break.
