Bad Store Layouts

It's a well-known grocery store trick-o-da-trade to design your aisle layouts to maximize sales. The tricks are many and varied. For example, items that you want the shopper to focus on are usually on a shelf that's about 5'2" from the floor, because that is the average eye-level of a middle-aged woman which is your average supermarket shopper.

Apparently the shelf-stockers at Rite Aid didn't get the memo. This weekend I injured my back (or re-injured as it's a recurring injury from my more youthful, collegiate days) and so I hobbled to the drug store to look for some nifty product marketed especially for and yet not necessarily designed especially for back pain, like Doan's or something. And maybe some sort of insto-heating pad or other nifty contraption to make me feel better. And they had a plethora of back pain specific products, since this is America and we must be given 534,297 choices for everything.

And the were all on the bottom shelf. The shelf I couldn't reach because I couldn't bend over due to the back pain I was trying to alleviate by purchasing a back pain specific products that Rite Aid had convenient put on the bottom shelf.

I ended up purchasing plain old generic ibuprofen because a) it was cheaper and b) I could reach it.