Safeway

This place has NO hand soap or even hand sanitizer in their restrooms. I hope their employee restrooms are better than that or everyone should avoid this place because that’s a health code violation. I can’t imagine someone having a bowel movement there and then going shopping touching different foods 🤮

The prices on so many items at this Safeway are absolutely and unjustifiably through the roof. Take the lemon in this photo for example. How is it that this Safeway charges $1.25 for a single lemon when the same lemon on the same day at Raley’s costs $0.69, or 81 percent less? Just a week ago this Safeway was charging $0.99 per lemon. So in seven days the cost of a single lemon at this Safeway has gone up by more than 26 percent! There’s no shortage of lemons so what other than greed gives? I really hope that The Grid gets another grocer soon so that Safeway no longer has a monopoly on groceries in Midtown/Downtown. It’s absurd. Aside from the ridiculous prices, this store is clean, the shelves are well stocked and the staff is generally very helpful and friendly. It’s neither the staff nor the store managers I fault for my gripes, but rather the corporate greed. Thank goodness the FTC recently blocked Safeway’s parent company Albertsons from merging with Kroger. Otherwise this Safeway and its greedy corporate overlords might be charging $2.00 per lemon. LOL (but really crying inside).

This store keeps getting worse and worse. Soooo much of the inventory is locked up, which wouldn't be a big deal if it wasn't a 15 minute wait for an employee to come and help you open the case. Then there's one cashier in the entire store and the rest is self checkout. The produce is horrible and goes bad within 2-3 days. The deli, also sucks. Today I got a "ready to eat" egg salad sandwich that was literally mustard on bread with a couple of egg white chunks mixed in. Absolutely disgusting quality. I took two bites and thought I might throw up. It was a $6 sandwich by the way. The corporate greed needs to stop. Something's gotta give. The consumers literally cannot handle a 200% increase in prices while food quality continues to go down down down. Absolutely pathetic. Also the staff don't even get a living wage which is probably why they are so understaffed. Someone has to fund the CEO's yacht and private jet I suppose. Can't be paying cashiers a living wage when you have so many gosh darn shareholders. And please, don't tell me about the stupid "4u" program. Those coupons are not enough to offset a 200% price hike. But, I understand the need to prioritize I guess. The CEO needs to have their yacht and staff it too!!

Shopping after 10pm last week when the store is less crowded. I stopped and asked a Safeway employee for help locating a particular item. He told me the aisle the item was on and where it should be located but I asked him if he could show me exactly where it is as I couldn't seem to find it. He is very professional and polite and agrees to help. As he and I begin walking over to the item, an older guy (manager ???) named Carlos intervenes and tells him that is not his job and then directs me to the baking aisle to get baking soda. After searching again without any luck I find the first employee who walks over to the aisle and finds that the baking soda is on the top shelf and pushed to the back of the shelf. He grabs a box for me and pulls some more boxes of baking soda to the front of the shelf. It's clear that the roles of these two employees should be switched. One was helpful and provided the kind of customer service I expect when I am a customer in a Safeway, whereas Carlos was too busy seemingly discussing his time off with another coworker and left me to struggle to find an item that was both out of my sight and out of my reach. Cheers to the initial employee for his professionalism and helpfulness. It's clear that he understands how to take an extra second to help someone in need. Jeers to Carlos for his demonstration of poor customer service.

What can I say, it was a Safeway. Must be a bad area because they had a ton of security guards.