Late Sunday Night Visit To Ralph's!

I know, I know. Life in the fast lane Downtown must sound so exciting and so... exotic... to those of you who do not live here.

I mean - going to a major supermarket at 9 o'clock on a Sunday night - it just can't get any more exciting, much less glamorous, than that, can it?

Well, give us another week and it will seem as normal to us as naked performances artists hanging upside down in our lofts or Universal Studio blowing up cars outside our windows at 2 AM.

But for now - the exciting news of the day (or night) is that even at 9 PM Sunday night when I enter the store, an incredible six out of the seven cashiers were open! However, in all honesty, the lines were somewhat shorter than last night when five were open. And the sidewalk in front had four different groups of urbanistas heading back to their lofts in four different directions with their plastic bags in hand.

I had also walked from the subway and had run into to a small family chattering away in French as they walked back to the subway and I had also seen other people headed in other directions with their Ralph's plastic bags.

As for shopping options, I am finding by going with store brands and specials, I can shop almost as cheaply as at the 99 cent store - and get a lot better quality. The Ralph's yogurt is a great value - and while I usually get the 99 cent cole slaw salad bags at the 99 cent store, here they are both lot fresher and bigger at only a buck sixty-nine! And no thirty minutes in a check-out line!

But this brings me to one glitch. There was only one person in three of the lines when I checked out, so I got in one of the express lines figuring that would be the quickest.

Wrong!

It turns out Ralph's allows 15 rather than 10 items in the Express line. They also accept credit cards that need to be signed and they even accept... coupons... in the Express line. And the person before me had fifteen items and thirteen coupons - and then used a credit card.

About five people then made it through the non-Express line next to me before all the coupons could get sorted out...

Now since Ralph's has already stated they assume people will buy fewer items here due to smaller families and fewer kids - so why not make the Express lines 10 or less, if that appears to work best after they observe the situation.

And how about making at least one line cash only. That would still leave six lines for coupons users - and it might help put the 'Express' back into... Express.