Loose Morals? (By Casey)

Welcome to another Saturday with the engineering geek!  I want to again draw your attention to/compliment my wife on the banner, which has been perfected over the week.  It took a lot of hard work with various photo-editing software and spatial configurations (well it was hard work for her…I layed on the bed and watched He-Man DVDs in my Ninja Turtle boxers).  I feel very grateful for everything she does for the blog and for letting me be a one-seventh writer on it.

And speaking of awesomeness–check out our sweet new domain name!  That was also Jenn, and she put my name first!  How lucky am I?

Also, check out my new BUTTON!  All pencil-sketchy to go with my comic book obsession interest!

I also want to apologize for the snail’s pace I’ve had in responding to comments on my posts.  I value your input and resolve to get on it a little bit quicker!

Speaking of input, today’s post shall be interactive!  I’m going to tell a tale of our lives and ask for some feedback, opinions, and maybe some guidance!  It’ll be a first for the Blogosphere (except that I’m sure it won’t be)!

For those of you that are unfamiliar with our northeastern U.S. culture, one of our two major supermarket chains in Maine is Hannaford.  Pretty much one in every town, at least until you really get into the boonies, then it’s like every other town.  And they extend into all of New England, I believe, though maybe not quite so concentrated.

Also for those of you unfamiliar, I was suckered into hired by my current employer to be the plumbing/fire protection designer that is in charge of doing supermarket projects. I’ve done probably 30-40 stores in the past 6 years. Currently, we’re doing quite a bit of Hannaford work.

So last summer I’m at the newly remodeled Dover, NH store doing my final walkthrough before the grand reopening.  We was told that this was the first store to have something new:  a sort of “grocery drive-thru” aptly called “Hannaford To Go”.   See, you order on-line and then drive to the store and they walk out a nearby door and hand you your groceries.  Nearby coolers at the front of the store keep it fresh until you arrive.  Neat, huh?

The other thing we were told is that the North Windham store would be next!  This was the Hannaford I grew up with, being from Windham.  It’s currently the second closest Hannaford to us, but it’s closest to our commute and across the street from our gym so we end up grabbing groceries there a lot.

A few months later, it was done and I tried it out.  I’ve found it to be a great service for those times that I just need to pick up a few of the usual items on the way home from work.  I get in my order in the morning, drive-up, hit a button and tell them my name, and they take my payment and put my groceries in my trunk for me!  There is a $5.00 service fee but it’s well worth it.

After doing this two or three times, I happened to be with Jenn when we were picking up our “Hannaford To Go”.  She drove up, hit the button and gave them my name.  Keep in mind that our winter in Maine has been very mild this year.  Sunny and in the 40’s has been the norm until a week or so ago.  This night happened to be cold with a very nasty cold wind.  This was the first such night the weather had been wintery when I had been at the drive-thru.   Instead of the cheery woman coming out to take our payment, we got a shivering middle-aged woman, bundled in a puffy coat and knit hat, trying her best to be cheery even though she had obviously drawn the short straw with her coworkers.  Her cheeks were all pinkish red and I admit that I started to feel a little bad for her.

She took the credit card from Jenn and double-checked her form for our order.  EVERY other time it’s “Everything’s ok!  We didn’t have to substitute anything!”  This time was “We were out of the bags of apples you randomly picked off our website and don’t really have a huge vested interest in, so instead we hand-picked you a bag of loose apples ourselves, making sure they were the same type and similar weight.  You don’t have to take them if they’re not good enough for you.”

Ok, so my description has a little bit of a “Jenn spin” on it–as soon as we accepted our substitution and the woman walked off, Jenn started judging us for being a part of this process, which she likened to slavery.  And she told me she felt like we were “weird rich people” that can’t be bothered to get out of our car and go into the store.  She was even more surprised by this whole thing when the woman wheeled out the cart and put them in the trunk for us.

She told me that this would be my job from now on, because I have loose morals.  Apparently, someone who has worked to help the poor and the homeless for many years has moral trouble having grocery slaves using Hannaford To Go.  I partially see her point on this particular outing.  I’ll also note that we were the only ones there taking advantage of this service making it more awkward.  Typically when I go there is one to three other vehicles at the drive thru.

So is using this service morally wrong?  Or was it just bad circumstances giving Jenn a bad first impression?Yes, they are getting our groceries for us, bringing them to us, putting them in the trunk for us, substituting items for us, and taking our credit card back and forth so we can just sit there.  But it’s soemthing the store is playing up right now, and there IS an extra $5 fee (which Jenn has noted the poor employee probably sees little to none of).

I will most likely keep using this service.  It may feel a little awkward one certain types of days, but oh well, I paid and I’m lazy when I can be.  Jenn will never use this service again.  What do you think?