Trader Joe’s, aldi, and small private stores from now on. Go fuck yourselves Kroeger.
If ethical reasons are a concern, you might want to avoid Trader Joe’s as well on account of their union busting activities.
I hear you. I agree that union busting is bad. I support trader joes employees unionizing. I don’t want their stores to close and those employees to be out of a job.
Any employer that’s a union buster deserves to be boycotted until they close and something better comes along to fill the need (which it will do quickly). In truth, the grocery supply chain/warehousing being so strongly coupled with the supermarkets is the primary point of inertia in the US regarding grocery stores opening where they’re needed. Most independent distributors only focus on restaurant contracts, because they can achieve higher margins there.
Edit: Not that coop distribution doesn’t exist. For example https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Associated_Wholesale_Grocers who are represented by the teamsters in four of their distribution centers.
They’re also one of the companies trying to destroy the NLRB.
AND they actively steal small brand recipes and ideas, then have a contract manufacturer churn it out at a cheaper price.
Traitor Joe’s is more like it
Curious as to what the union’s demands are. It’s my impression that Trader Joe’s treats their employees relatively well. I have multiple friends who work for them and are paid a living wage (in the Bay Area of all places) for working reasonable hours.
If a company genuinely cares about their employees, they’d support them unionizing.
Agreed
Trader Joe’s changed their stance during the pandemic and are aggressively fighting unionization. https://www.huffpost.com/entry/trader-joes-attorney-nlrb-unconstitutional_n_65b41e7ae4b014b873b11cc2 https://inthesetimes.com/article/trader-joes-union-organizing-fight
Aldi is so rad and they have the best chocolate.
That Burnt Caramel Sea Salt though. The best!
Those chocolate peanut butter cups are crack. I’m sad that people at my location have realized that, because they are sold out a third of the time.
I only have one smaller chain grocery store in my area, and it’s half snake oil targeted to old hippies. It’s also three to four times as expensive because old hippies apparently have money?
I wish we would get an Aldi’s.
Right because this won’t spread…
Kroger and Safeway have been the absolute face of enshittification since the pandemic. They’ve also been accused of price fixing, and are trying to merge into a monopoly. They also regularly abuse disabled employees (at multiple stores in my area).
I have absolutely no doubt that they will do this the moment they think they can get away with it. In a fair economy, they would have been driven out of business years ago.
They also renamed a bunch of locations from Safeway > FreshMart and laid off career employees with years of raises and benefits and forced them to reapply under the new franchise name. Same owners, same stores, but LOOPHOLE.
Fucking assholes.
That’s so dirty and unethical. I hope their conscience tortures them for years, but I realize that’s wishful thinking since there is a good chance they’ve so completely repressed any concept of ethics or morality that they would sell their own mother into slavery for an extra tenth of a penny.
Who said AI was gonna put people out of jobs? Look here, a whole new industry of gig work where people can market themselves as “best buyers”. Is your Kroger algorithm fucking you over with horrible prices? Not to worry, with a low low subscription fee, you’ll have access to our best buyers whose meticulously curated profiles will buy your items for you with guaranteed lowest price every time. They’ll even deliver it to your door for a small fee, or upgrade to our premium plus preferred plan for unlimited free deliveries. We also offer a comprehensive algorithm consulting service to help you reshape your algorithm for optimum purchasing power. Be the best buyer your can be ;) /SARCASM
That is some Philip K Dick reality right there.
I already don’t shop at my local Kroger owned store because they’re anti union cuntfucks, this is just icing on the cake to never enter their stores ever again.
I thought Kroger employees had a union. Does this one not?
Most are unionized but not all. Kroger’s union is also just not very good. I never met a union rep that wasn’t friends with management. They do very little to actually represent workers. Also, Kroger has such a high turnover rate that newer employees will usually vote to approve any contract that gives them a raise, no matter how small.
These contracts last for a few years, so as other retailers raise wages to compete with each other, Kroger workers are stuck in their old contract until it expires. If anything, Kroger’s union results in lower wages for the workers compared to other grocery retailers.
UFCW is further weakened by “right-to-work” laws that give union benefits to non-union employees. In my experience, many of the people who opt out of union membership are brainwashed by conservatism and are anti-union. They are also often the people who stay at Kroger the longest.
In addition, Kroger has dozens of “districts”, each with their own contract. These contracts are all negotiated at different times so that if there is a strike, Kroger can send managers from other districts and hire scabs until the strike is over. This prevents strikes from ever really hurting Kroger’s bottom line.
So, to answer your question, Kroger is technically unionized but it’s union is pretty ineffective. Kroger basically operates the same as Walmart or Meijer but with a handful of union policies that they have to follow or they might get fined for a union violation.
With that being said, I am still very pro union. The above is just based on my own experience, having worked there for too many years.
Honestly if there’s one union I’d opt-out of it’s UFCW. They’re either in bed with the corporations or so inept at what they do, that you’re better off at a non-union job.
I’m anti Kroger - my wife and daughter both worked there after the pandemic. They’re definitely union around here but they’ve negotiated the worst wages in the area. You make $13/hr and still have to pay dues.
Now would be a good time to start a line of headwear that has infrared leds to shield your face from cameras.
IR-Cloak is a wrap around frame designed to shield the maximum amount of your eye measurements from being captured on technology using infrared for illumination or mapping/scanning. With adjustable nose pads and flexible silicone temple ends, IR-Cloak is extremely comfortable and accommodating to all facial features.
Frame is not reflective to cameras (works with IR-blocking lenses only)
Infrared blocking lenses turn black on infrared cameras to remove critical eye measurements
Blocks 3D infrared facial mapping (iPhone Face ID) & infrared iris scanning during day & night
☞ https://www.reflectacles.com/order/ircloak
Appreciate the info and link, but $168 for what is essentially a few dollars of SOLAS tape and a pair of IR laser safety glasses? Bruh.
it was a reply to “Now would be a good time to start a line of headwear that has infrared leds to shield your face from cameras.”
i won’t buy it but it’s already out there. He probably produces them alone and can’t sell them for less than that.
If you’ve got the time, diy; if you’ve got more money than time, $168 may be preferable. There are people who won’t be making that much money this month, there are others who buy media platforms as a hobby for $44000000000 🤷
Hm. I wonder if I could get those lenses in my prescription. That would be neat.
But I already wear glasses. What about a ball cap?
suit yourself
???
What I meant to say is: “Is there a ball cap version?”
Kroger is the largest grocery store chain in the U.S. by revenue and owns a number of different brands, including Ralphs, Fred Meyer, Pick’n Save, Food 4 Less, and Dillions, among a host of others
Kroger told Gizmodo… “customers are shopping more with Kroger now than ever because we are fighting inflation and providing great value.”
… or maybe customers don’t have much of a choice ?
“customers are shopping more with Kroger now than ever because we are fighting inflation and providing great value.”
I call shenanigans. I don’t always pay close attention to the prices of all the things I buy, but one thing I do pay attention on is soda. (Probably because it’s bad for me, so I give myself additional justification to buy it or not.)
And amidst all this “inflation”, and all the talk about lowering prices back down to reasonable levels Kroger’s price just on soda just jumped 25%.
Years ago I used to get a 12-pack for $5, and sometimes there’d be a 3-for-$12 deal. When COVID hit, it was 3-for-$15. Post-COVID, $7 a box. When they raised it to $8, I stopped buying it unless it’s on sale or if my wife specifically requests it, and then I only buy one.
Then I went to Kroger a few weeks ago, and the only way to get a price under $8/box was to sign up for something on their app and sell them my personal information. So I decided not to buy from Kroger anymore.
This week my wife specifically requested a box, I was in Kroger anyway, and now it’s $10/box or 3-for-$8. Fuck that. They hit their limit with me, and there are no circumstances in which I’m paying that much for soda.
Soda in general has increased across the board, but 12 for $8 is ridiculous since that’s basically vending machine levels (I can find local vending machines for $0.75/can).
At Costco, I can get a 35-pack for about $18, less if it’s on sale, which is still pretty expensive, but way less than the grocery store (basically ~$6/12-pack). Just a few years ago it was around $0.25/can, and now it’s $0.50 in bulk, which is a huge shift.
2-liter prices are still pretty reasonable, so it seems the price increase is mostly for the packaging, not the product.
I go to Walmart and Food Lion because I worked for Kroger and I hate them.
Most of Kroger’s other brands operate in areas where there isn’t a Kroger. There’s a tiny exception with Harris Teeter but it’s mostly because it isn’t profitable to change the signs, I guess.
Fortunately, there’s a competing brand in my area that’s not under Kroger (or Walmart or Target), so I can easily avoid them. My local grocery isn’t a mom-and-pop, but it doesn’t extend that far outside of my state, so that’s nice.
AI was supposed to save the world.
These sociopaths have taken the only hope i ever thought we had and are going to use it to screw us. I want the money changers out of the temple NOW.
I don’t understand what exactly about it gave you hope.
Today I dumped some ancient Windows CE source code into it and asked it to generate a picture of what the screens would have looked like in the app, and it showed me.
Indeed.
60 years ago we were supposed to having to work very little by now thanks to automation, then automation came and instead of the productivity gains of it ending up spread across society, what happenned instead was that the extra productivity went just pushed up dividend and CxO pay higher and due to the reduced need for workers due to automation the purchasing power of salaries actually went down (for example, in the US the percentage of corporate revenues that went to pay salaries fell from 23% in the 70s down to 7% by 2014).
Expecting that, under the exact system that’s been moving us more and more towards Dystopia with each wave of automation, AI would somehow end up making things better for most people rather than better just for the Owner Class and worse for part or most of the rest, is pretty ill-informed and naive.
i knew that the owner class was the problem all along, and i knew that we needed to topple the owner class in order to utilize these things for their humanitarian benefits. i guess i naively thought people would band together for the hope of a better world. i watched the arab springs and the former soviet states and they gave me hope, but i guess the western world is too weak to do the right thing.
the more and more i watch good people do nothing and listen to arm chair commenters like yourself, the more i think that maybe we deserve this dystopia.
Thing is, human nature has been shaped to make alternatives feel impossible to achieve and any effort in that direction pointless to engage in. This was and is an ongoing project of generations of trauma, imposed norms and rules, hierarchies and conditioning; even if they are later educated to understand the predicament they are in, the conditioning is strong enough to dissuade all but the rare few not to do anything. Remember, feudalism lasted for over a thousand years.
an unbiased mediator and administrator of resources that makes logical decisions to benefit all of humanity, able to find patterns that most humans cannot, process data in ways humans cannot, and not driven by petty human emotion? yeah, why would something like that give me hope?
So was blockchain. And self-driving cars. And 3D printing. And carbon capture. And fusion power. And biofuels.
all those things still have the potential to create a better world, and the problem is still the same: the owner class is using them to benefit themselves only. we have to destroy this dystopia by any means necessary. every day we don’t is another day we doom billions to suffer for the benefit of a few.
Everyone should enter these stores dressed up like it’s Payday (the video game) until they stop with this facial recognition nonsense.
until they stop
They will never stop unless they are forced to stop.
They will choose to stop if it doesn’t make them money. 😀
But yes, not allowing them to do this in the first place would be a very reasonable thing to fight for.
I’m going to get reflectacles. They’re a little pricey, but they’re much less itchy than balaclavas.
The high cost of being poor strikes again.
Looks like I’m finally going to have to start wearing the ol’ anti facial recognition makeup
can’t wait for the absolutely bonkers technique arms race between corporate facial recognition tech devs and makeup artist cyberpunks
Curious to see if anti-recognition causes the prices to go down or up.
Woof. The logo was always a hint about what they were planning to do to the customers. First the K and the G came for the letter o…and I did nothing because I am not the letter o.
Ralph’s in SoCal used to be a midrange grocery store. These days, its prices are sometimes higher than Whole Foods! I feel like most large grocery chains are moving to a premium price point. They aren’t interested in providing food for everyday families
Bit late for surge pricing concerns
The second-best time for concern is now.
Any kind of surge pricing by for profit companies providing basic needs should be illegal full stop
Any kind of surge pricing
by for profit companies providing basic needsshould be illegal full stopFixed that for you
What’s wild is I’m not even mad about this to some extent. Like personalized price adjustments just feels like better couponing. Its just the fact the majority of people’s food needs are met by for profit companies means that the well being of their customers are not even on the table of shit they track for.
Worse yet, we KNOW they are selling this data and our privacy is 100% not a concern of theirs either.
If my local grocery coop, farmers market did this, and gave reasonable efforts to keep their systems local, secure, data lean, and optional. I wouldn’t even be mad. This is none of those things and done, again, by people that would crush orphans for profit if there was a market for it.
