TAO Entry 3

Publix is a wonderful place to observe humans interact with products, information, and other people. After spending an hour or so in Publix, I was able to discover a few trends.

At store checkout line I noticed how majority of the magazines are catered towards women. I then realized a trend of how often women pick up a magazine of interest, skim through it until it is their time at the register, and then they nonchalantly put the magazine back where they got it without purchasing. I do this, but is it considered stealing? No, certainly not. Let’s just call it temporarily borrowing. You don’t see people picking up an apple in the produce section and eat it before they reach the checkout line. Can you think of any other products that people use in the store and not purchase?

While standing in line, five of the eight women were looking through magazines. Two of the women were busy keeping their children from touching all of the candy. And one was texting on her cell phone. The five women skimming the magazines put them back when it was time to pay, but the one who was on her cell phone picked up a People Magazine and bought it last minute. In this case, she was the anomaly. 

On a further note, why do men tend to not pick up and skim magazines at the checkout line? Sure, the selection is predominately catered to the female (US, People, Cosmo etc.), but I have noticed there are magazines that would be of interest to the average male. Women are usually the ones who do the weekly shopping for the family. They buy in bulk and they have dinners planned out; therefore, they are putting more in their shopping cart and having to wait longer in the line. This observation revealed a trend in men and grocery shopping. They typically go to the grocery store for a few pre-selected items. Bread, deli meat, a couple frozen dinners, beer. They are in and out as fast as possible, and this usually involves the self-checkout line. AND even if they were secretly interested in what celeb has the best bikini body, they wouldn’t be caught dead picking up the magazine. There was one man, however, who had a full shopping cart, AND was flipping through a Cooking Light magazine in the checkout line. From the look of this man and the items in his cart, I like to assume he was a family man buying groceries for wife and kids. What a pleasant anomaly to observe!

The baggers at Publix are exceptionally nice people. I love to observe customers interact with these kind employees because each person responds differently. A common occurrence, and therefore trend I noticed was people rarely accept the Publix bagger’s offer to carry their groceries to the car. I for one, NEVER do this, simply because I hate awkward forced small talk. Is this the case for the others who deny the baggers, or are we all cheap and don’t want to tip the kind employer? There were 3 people ahead of me in my checkout line. The first two nicely declined the bagger’s offer, exited the building and went on with their day. The third was, well old. She could barely walk. Naturally, she accepted the kind bagger to take her groceries to her car. I will never know whether or not the old lady tipped the bagger, but I like to assume she did. I suppose this lady is the anomaly in this case.