Amen to the family shopping en masse sooooo s-l-o-w-l-y taking up the entire aisle! I get away from them as soon as I can.

Four employees in the deli and only one waiting on customers! So I just walked away...wasn't worth the grief.

It's a long time (several months) since I've been able to go shopping, and I'm told it will be a long time before I'll be able to do it again, but I must say I'm not missing it. I'm lucky to have a friend who does it for me these days. (Though with me having Meals on Wheels delivered daily there's not a lot to do.)

One of my pet peeves about shopping IS having to go shopping! I hate it.

As a single person feeding just myself, I really hate having to buy bags of fruit and veg - packed to feed an army for a month. I don't really need a kilo of grapes when just a small bunch would do me fine, and I don't need more than 3-4 potatoes or apples or tomatoes, thank you! Besides, I like to select my own - there's always at least one sprouted or rotting or bruised individual lurking in there.

I hate it when I have to buy mushrooms on a styrofoam tray wrapped in plastic - when the whole world knows that mushrooms are best packaged in paper bags. In fact, the supermarket knows this too, because when they sell loose mushrooms, paper bags are provided!

I hate it when they decide to change the shelves around so that I have to hunt around for things that used to be HERE, but have been moved to THERE. It throws me out completely.

I always shop with a shopping list - but it's bad when I forget to take the shopping list with me. Sigh.

Dontcha just hate it when the trolley you select has a wonky or squeaky wheel? Or when you open the kiddy-seat (where I put squashable items) you find it covered in indescribable spilled Something? Thankfully, this doesn't happen often, but for 3 weeks in a row once, I managed (out of all the hundreds of trolleys) to choose the same dirty one! I lodged a complaint with management.

I hate it when manufacturers of my favourite items decide to change their labels.

I hate kid-proof lids. For the life of me I can't open the wretched things! Lately, I can't even open those peel-off lids on fruit snacks and cheese, much less the ones on tins.

Annie....I want to know how your kids ever had an opportunity to try Prego..in my mind the worst of the bottled sauces...If push comes to shove, give me Paul Newman's or even Barilla. You have only yourself to blame!!
Remembering when one of my kids came home from a friend's begging for Aerosol can cheese!! We had the very nice cheese spread from Maytag....all they could eat, always always...and they ( actually my daughtere!) asked for "squirt cheese!!" I said we don't eat that in this house! LOL! When you grow up and can buy your own cheese you may buy that if you wish!.
I have noticed now that she's grown up and has kids of her own that there never has been any in her house either!!
Linda C

Have to agree with all of the above!
Ever gone to the bakery and ask for something the counter person needs to pick up by hand, they use the wax paper thingy to keep their hands from touching the item and then end up throwing it into the bag with the food! Duh! So now their germs are sealed in my bag with the food.
Kim

Trying a recipe you thought you scored from a really good cook, and finding out they left something out. On Purpose.

Oh my. Do people really do that?? How horrible. I can't even imagine. I'm so flattered when someone asks me for a recipe, and I'm happy if they are able to recreate it for themselves.

Although she had many requests, my late aunt refused to give up the recipe to her famous bundt cake. After her death my uncle fessed up and told me it was a Betty Crocker mix, but she added sour cream to the batter. :-)

Not being able to buy good roaster chickens at the regular grocery store because no one (except me) around here bothers to roast a whole chicken (esp. in the summer).

Adele (who hates skinned chicken breasts)

ACK! Kim47, I never thought of that! ahhaah!

"I do is make a grocery list. Buy all the ingredients for a specific recipe. Get home and forget what recipe it was that I wanted to make to begin with!"

Oh man - if I had a nickle for every time I have done THIS one!

Another pet peeve of mine is that I do not have a good way to store potatoes and onions. Growing up, we had a nice cool dark cabinet with wire baskets in it to store root veggies. Now I have a bowl in a cabinet and I always seem to loose a potato out of it, way in the back, which I don't find until it has morphed into a smelly soggy mess. Getting that smell out is almost impossible.

I agree on the deli bags, prepackaged produce, gassed meats, and everything else that has been mentioned.

Alexa

These are great. I agree mostly with the cauliflower thing, where you can't get the darn bag open without resorting to walking over to the knife drawer to cut it. I also hate the produce stickers. AND especially, I (who is the most impatient person I know) detest entire families shopping. The kids are always in the way. You know, though, sometimes, especially if it's a single mom, I guess it is better than her leaving the younguns at home unsupervised. OK. I wil try to stop being impatient with the little people.
I also hate the small ends up in the egg carton. Dropped too many eggs cause I couldn't get a good purchase on them.
I also really do not like somebody ruining a perfectly beautiful pan of yeast rolls because of the evils of drinking Scotch, not that anybody here would do that. (hee hee)
Can't think of anything new. Oh! Puff pastry shells. They come in a box of 6, but they have no plastic inside, so invariably you take out two, and close the box, and the other 4 get freezer burned. I guess it's my own fault that I dont put them in freezer bags. I did that once, but then didn't have the directions since I threw the box away,and could not remember how long to cook them. Next time that happens, I think I'll have a wee bit of Scotch to help mellow the anger.
Sherry

Not having enough money to buy as many gourmet cheeses as I want and extended families all very slowly following momma while shopping seem to top my list of grocery store complaints.
In the kitchen, it would be dh deciding that all those containers of hot soup I have just put in the freezer are not good for the freezer so he takes them all out and sets them on the floor to cool -without telling me. And I find them the next morning. And this has happened more than once!!
Otherwise, not much bothers me except for people who have more than 20 items in the 20 item or less lane.

Okay, I thought of a cooking related one that I get mad at myself for. No matter how many times I read through the recipe, right after I put the __________ in the oven I double check the recipe to see how long to bake it and notice I left something out, or forgot a step. Aaargh, that bugs me so much, and I have only myself to blame. (which is really what bugs me the most!)

Linda C, they hide that squirt cheese stuff when they find out you're coming over! :-)

Sally

Hello

I have never posted in this forum, but can I add and agree that anything packaged in plastic and/or styrofoam keeps me from buying it ?

I am lucky to have two year-round farmers markets near me so I am able to buy produce/meats without plastic ... I carry my little old lady non-plastic bag shopping tote :)

I refuse to buy any condiment packaged in plastic, and reuse the glass jars for storing dried herbs etc. or recycle them.

Linda, LOL @ the squirt cheese. My son has a friend who's dad is a chef and caterer, and when he was younger, the kid ate at my house and raved about dinner. I laughed, it was lasagna hamburger helper. He made his mom buy it for him! I bet the dad was mortified :)

Sally, I do the same thing! I always forget a step!

Sherri....I am here to tell ya! Scotch helps a lot of things.
Last week I was spending a lot of time in the church kitchen....and was very very sick of trying to cut anything and of asking others to cut with knives that look like they were stored in the tool box. I use better knives that that to dig dandelions!
So I bought some of the better Chicago Cutlery forged knives...I had a 30% off coupon and bought 6 knives and hid them in the locked cabinet with the lace table cloths and the silver service!
But then it came time to take them out of the packaging and actuually use them to cut up a water melon and slice the celery! It took easily 10 minutes to get those packages open without requiring a trip to the ER!
And that brings up 3 more peeves. Over packaged products...bad knives....and people who don't know the difference and toss the good knives into the drawer with the junk!
Linda C

Canned goods that don't have the stackable bottoms on them and you can't stack them in your pantry! Why the heck do they make these cans anymore?

Those lunch meat packages that are supposed to have zip locs on them and they fall apart once they are opened....why bother? They are useless!!!!!

Sackers/checkers that put meat in with something that's going to get contaminated! Or they put cold/frozen in with something dry like my bag of flour????????

One of the most annoying things to me, are those damn plastic produce bags at the supermarket, because I can never get them open. I pull, tug, curse, and struggle with them, until I get fed up and toss'em.

But, it does my heart good to know that, at least, I bring a little sunshine into the lives of the bored and lonely guys up in the surveillance control room.

There's more, but I don't want to come off like a Negative Nancy.

Sol

Bottled and canned goods that have their expiration dates in code.

My shopping related peeve is that the store near us fills in the holes in their produce section when they run out of something. They need to leave a blank spot so you know they are out . . .once I was looking for bell peppers and I must have walked the whole section three times looking. . . .I finally found someone who worked there and he just said, 'Oh. We're out!" Ugh. I wanted to kick the guy.

Cooking pet peeves include leaving an ingredient out just like Sally said. And knives . .. don't get me started! I cannot believe how many people do not understand the need for sharp knives. My mother-in-law swears that dull knives are safer. Ugh.

I also get annoyed when I spill something on the cooktop while I am cooking . . .there is nothing I can do about it at that moment because everything is hot (and I'm still cooking) so I have to stand there and watch it get baked on when I know it is just going to take that much more elbow grease to get it off later.

I'm sure I could go on, but I don't want to sound any crankier than I already do! ;-)

These are great, the worst part of the produce stickers for me is they are there because most people cannot recognize produce any more. About 15 years ago ,which was pre sticker, I was buying a zucchini. The cashier asked me what it was. I of course thought, "Oh my god, it's a zucchini, he doesn't even recognize a zucchini!!" Then he asked me what letter it starts with.

bread bags that have a piece of tape closing them. how am I supposed to seal the bag again after I have taken my one slice?

-Robin

Robin, I always give the bread bag a twist, then turn the end of the bag inside out and pull it tight over the bread. It stays in place just great and I don't have to keep track of that stupid little plastic tab, or the wire twist...

All of the above plus just today while shopping, Vons in Ca., I ask the checker to please not put everything in one bag.

The last 2 trips to the market I came home with squashed tomatoes and bums. They were on the bottom of a bag I could hardly lift and of course it emptied its self all over the back of my car.

Well she went on to tell me that there new policy was to put at least 7 items in each bag! So that explains why last week I got home to discover that not only did they charged me twice for the roast I bought but it was in a bag with all my salad greens. I did get my money back for both but what a pain.

Are they trying to save money on bags? I will be taking my trader joe's bags from now on.

My biggest peeve is the new packaging for soda. It's not only hard to carry but it doesn't fit in any cabinet I have and when you open it all the cans fall on your feet. It hurts!

Claudia

Oh Claudia! Those poor bums!

hee hee! Sorry couldn't help it.

The new cranberry sauce cans. You can only open one end with a can opener. Now my family loves jellied cranberry sauce (not me!) but how the heck am I supposed to get that much loved and recognized round can shaped glob of sauce out if I can't open both ends of the can and push it out!

Squished cilantro. Every time I buy cliantro I have to snatch it back from the cashier as soon as she rings it up or the bagger will bruise it and it will rot before I get home!

This is not exactly a cooking related pet peeve but it is a shopping pet peeve. I hate it when the grocery bagger packs my raw chicken in the same bag as fresh fruit and veggies. I now ask for a seperate bag for the chicken and they look at me like I'm crazy.
Lois

Shaun,
at my age my bums have been squashy for quit some time although DH did make a nice comment last weekend as I was bending over to get something out of my car.

I need to make sure I buy more of those jeans!

And speaking of cans. What about the cans with the pull tabs that cant be opened with a can opener. I really hate those. I usually end up with corn or whatever all over the kitchen. Before my mother passed away I saw her reduced to tears trying to open a can of campbells soup with the pull tab.

Claudia
who is enjoying shopping now that school has started.

I can relate to and agree with most of all that has been posted so far. My big thing is bar code pricing on any item. I miss the the purple sticky tag!!! I hate trying to match up the price posted on the shelf with what I'm buying. The most challenging being the cheese case at my local place up here..... a messed up case full of fairly good cheese and a million price options stuck on the front of the case. I'll add the three or more options with any product anymore....fat free, carb free, salt free, new and improved......where the heck is the original one at anymore??? That's the one I want....even though I don't know what I'll be paying for it thanks to the bar code thing!!! LOL!

David

Pat_t, I second the "can of this" and "bottle of that". Even "stick of butter" is a pain, because over on my side of the world butter comes in brick-shaped pieces, not sticks. The Internet came to my rescue on that one, but you can't always count on finding this kind of information on the web.

Cling film, or rather the last brand I bought. It only clings to itself, making it impossible to cover, say, a bowl unless I wrap it completely in film.

Milk and juice cartons that can't be closed again once opened.

Individually plastic-wrapped fruit and vegetables.

Stores that only sell onions in net bags of 10 when I only need 2.

Dirty shopping baskets and carts. If they can afford to pay scores of teenagers for rounding up the carts and replacing the baskets, they can also pay to have them washed now and then.

I saw a lot of pet peeves of people about families shopping with little kids. Well sorry, DH works and is also athletic director. He gets home at 6 most days and if there is a game it is after 10. Our closest grocery store is 20 miles a way one way and closes at 7 so if we want any food in our house I have to take the girls and Hayden with me. Rhiannon stays by me most of the time and Peyton and Hayden ride in the cart. Sorry for those who don't like seeing families in the store but I know how much Rhiannon has learned and if they didn't go with me we wouldn't eat:)

Stacie

Claudia, I have just the opposite pet peeve about how much stuff is put into the bags. I swear I've gotten home with my groceries and found just one item in a bag. Those checkers/baggers are bag crazy! I think they have the rule where no more than 2 or 3 items can go in a bag. They even put milk jugs in bags, and they have handles and don't need bags. Of course, my pet peeve on me is that I have bought some net bags to take shopping with me so I don't have to use the store's bags, but I have yet to remember to take them in the store with me.

Stacie, I think maybe the people complaining about whole families are referring to the situations where people take their whole clan with them. They not only have their children, they have their parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, nephews, inlaws, you name it, they're all together going shopping.

Sally

Stacie, I don't think they're talking about people shopping with well-behaved children. They're talking about extended families with two or three buggies and adults who are constantly blocking the aisles as they consult with each other. Families: good. Armadas: bad.

My shopping pet peeve? Why do grocery stores put so many displays in the aisles? All of the stores around here have something in most of the aisles that makes it too narrow for two buggies to pass.

Sally2, oh gosh just the other day I got home with my groceries and my milk had leaked all over the place! Thank goodness it was in a bag or my carpet in my car would have smelled awful!

My greatest peeve is that the store places my favorite items high up, in narrow, deep spaces, where nobody can see them or reach them, so, of course, they don't sell very well and the store eventually discontinues them. (I know SOMETHING needs to go on the top shelf, and grocery stores have studied the psychological factors in product placement, but the best-sellers will be bought anyway; more prominent locations might move the other products better.) When I look at the rack of discontinued/marked-down items, I always see products I'd never noticed before but would have bought if they were not displayed invisibly. Wouldn't it be nice if grocery stores placed feedback forms on a bulletin board, so consumers could voice their preferences, concerns, and suggestions?

Secondly, as a person who is lactose-intolerant, I would appreciate more dairy product alternatives. I love the lactose-free milk and cottage cheese, and I've discovered Smart Beat cheese (American-style) and Silk soy yogurt [which my store has discontinued because it was a slow-seller on the top shelf :-( ]... but I wish there were more lactose-free or soy versions of other cheeses, such as mozzarella, parmesan, and ricotta (you can see that I miss lasagna).

Oh, yeah, my third peeve: why don't the stores maintain the supply of twisters for the plastic bags in the produce section? Sure, I can tie a knot, but I'd like to be able to recycle and reuse the bags, which is not possible when I have to tear them open.

Sue

nodding my head in agreement.

.....how about the grocery store that remodels AND changes the whole store layout.

You can't find what you usually buy either because it's been moved to a new location or they stop carrying that item. ARRRGH.

Or the store that hasn't remodeled, just relocates items to an entirely different part of the store - our Sam's Club did this recently. hisssss

I like to go in and out as quick as possible.

Don't mess with my store layouts.

I can relate to the organic cereals being out of reach, while the ones loaded with HFCS are at eye level ... arghhhhh !

From another forum, something to think about :) The child seats that many of us put our veggies/fragile items in ... how many wet diapers have sat there ?

eeeeew! ohiomom, I never thought of that! (making mental note for next shopping trip...)

I thought of another. I bought some granny smith apples today to make Ann's apple tart. They were oiled! Why would they oil/wax apples? I hate picking up cucumbers and getting greasy hands, but now apples. too? Aye yi yi!

Stacie, I don't mind when someone has their children shopping with them. Been there, done that. What really bothers me is when children are running wildly all over the place, touching everything and being loud! Not just in stores, but in restaurants, theaters, any public place. I don't understand why some people don't know how to "control their monkeys"! LOL

Linda

I have MANY pet peeves, but first let me tell you two ways to open produce bags. These are wonderful!

1. Touch a recently-misted piece of produce with your index finger and thumb. Use these to open the bag. It works!

Or...

2. Put the bag between the palms of your hands and rub your hands together like you're trying to warm them. The bag will open. A three year old showed me how to do this. I always wonder how she learned to do it...

My three biggest pet peeves are:

1. tiny aisles
2. tiny parking lots
3. the family "armada" as someone so succinctly put it! :)

I have no objections to moms with kids in tow who are conscious and considerate of others who are also shopping. But family groups of kids, aunts, uncs, cousins, grands, and anyone else who was bored that day and thought an outing to the grocery store sounded like great fun and then string themselves across the aisle and are oblivious to everyone else are my complaint. That and the clueless small child who darts out of nowhere into the path of my very heavy cart (I often shop for two households) as I'm trying to hurry. Scary. All of this only happens at the bargain bag it yourself store on the weekends (my only shopping time). The pricey neighborhood store never has the above annoyances.

I don't love grocery shopping especially under the time constraints I usually have. Anyone who impedes my getting it done in a hurry earns my cranky look.

Yeah, what Linda, Dishesdone, Linda C, Nancy ( those misters ALWAYS go off just as I'm reaching for the veggies ), Marigene ( Oh yeah on the potatoes ), Michelle, BooBerry ( don't you just want to run over them with the cart ), Claire-de-Lune, ( Amen! ), Annie ( every have to go back to the store three times to get everything... ), LowSpark, DaisyDuckworth ( are we related? ), Kim, Sally ( me too ), MooseMac ( yeah, I miss seeing the can ridges on the cranberry sauce too ), Pump-Toad ( me too ), David ( in Michigan everything is supposed to be marked... So on the days I have nothing better to do I hunt for groceries with no price and take them to the manager, have him mark them then leave the full cart for someone else to put away... lol ), Sue ( I'm short too... ), OhioMom ( Welcome to CF! As for the wet diapers in shopping carts, what about wet diapers on restaurant tables... ) and what everyone else said.

Now if I were to list ALL my pet peeves we'd be here until Christmas... lol

But... The big jars of Motts applesauce, the opening is too small and the jar is too deep to get all the applesauce out...

Rita

Amen BarMom!!!!

I wouldn't mind well-behaved children following mom or dad quietly either. Except that's far from reality. Children are allowed to run, touch everything and -- please don't flame me you parents, I know YOUR children aren't doing this -- babies and toddlers who are allowed to scream and scream and scream. There was a screamer at Home Depot of all places the other night. What the heck? Can't the parents leave the store at that point? My god the echoing throughout the huge warehouse store - it's painful to me - quite painful.

Costco is the armada haven. And it's not shopping - they are perusing the aisles in a four-abreast group. I mean, I know it's fantastic and it's my favorite store but when did Costco become a tourist attraction? LOL. And on the weekend when the food-samplers are at every aisle? You'd think no one had eaten for days! Yes, you CAN skip a taste of the organic chipotle and chocolate granola thingie. Just walk by!

Oh, Gina! I totally forgot about the "sample ladies"! LOL I avoid them at all costs, & try not to make eye contact. NO! I do NOT want to try any of the pre-packaged, artificially flavored, cardboard textured, preservative laden crap you are pushing today! End of story.

Linda

The sample ladies at Sams, sample shrimp and fresh salmon and lovely cheeses as well as packaged mini quiche and bad meatballs.
I don't mind "Armadas" at all....but I really hate the bands of Huns...When I see kids running up and downb the aisles screaming and touchings tuff....I tell them very sternly..."you are not allowed to do that!! Don't you know any better? Tell your mother I said she shouldn't let you do that!!"
And did you ever take a look at the sludge in the bottom of those vegetable bins where all that misting has been going on? I think it's a breeding ground for paramecium, flagella and slugs!
Linda C

My DH and I occasionally go to a glass store (for stained glass and fused glass craftspersons). They have a sign I love.

"Children running loose will be fed large amounts of espresso and sugar then sent home."

It works. Parents rein in their children pretty fast.

Carol

"cooking related pet peeves" Heyyy so far no one has shared their recipes for this!!! No T&T's? Doesn't sound so tasty though.
Sorry, I have been trying to be good since I first saw the post, and now I give up. And besides the aisle blockers are my pet peeve. Rude people. grrr. Sue

Twisties to tie up produce bags are totally unknown here. I wouldn't use them anyway (I cleaned out a drawer a few months ago that was literally an inch deep in unused twisties from packages of freezer bags, accumulated over 15 years!). I tie a slipknot with a loop in my bags so they can easily be opened again and if I haven't a trolley handy I can carry several bags with a finger slipped through the loop.
Misbehaving children I have no compunction against telling off. Miss Manners suggests the line, "Don't do that, you might get hurt!", accompanied by the Look that says "And I will be doing the hurting". Works for me :-D Takes a village to raise a child and I am part of the village.
My shopping-related pet peeve is our local grocery store (I live in a small town 37 km from the nearest other town) that either orders ridiculously small amounts of perishables, so they run out two days before the next delivery, or so much that you can't buy anything except what's right on the expiry date because they're not going to put fresher stuff out until all the old stuff is gone. And you can't buy the good brand of icecream in vanilla- lots of other flavours, but choc-mint doesn't go so well with apple cobbler :-P Why doesn't the person who orders consider that??? No one wants to eat a whole bowl of icecream in winter! (This is Australia, in case you hadn't guessed :-) .)

Great contributions everyone. One from me: I hate it when an item is missing from the shelf and the bored customer service person simply says "we must be out of it". Couldn't he/she at least pretend to look it up or something? I also hate how cold they keep the milk eggs/cheese aisle. It is freezing. You can tell the regulars-we all keep a jacket in the car for shopping.
jo

Someone mentioned cereal which made me think about how annoyed I get with the "healthy" and "Smart" labels on cereal but if you look at the ingredients they are absolutely loaded with sugar and other unhealthy junk!

Also it seems like no matter what item I am wanting to get...it can be the most obscure thing you can think of...everyone in the freakin' store is right there in my way getting the same thing!!!!!!!!! GRRRRRR! What is up with that?

The card they make you use to get the sale price. So they can track your every purchase and mail you junk coupons to see if they can get you to but something else.

Then they have to audacity to say "Mrs. so & so you have saves $87.50" like I would have bought that chicken at $7.99 a pound if it wasn't on sale.

DH just about fainted when he saw the price sticker on a whole pork loin I bought. It said the price was $65.28. He recovered when I explained I had the magic card that brought the price down to $21.05.

Or the way they price everything 5 for $7.00, 3 for $5.00. Please just tell me what 1 cost. I wish they would put a calculator at the door so you could figure out what you paid before you get home and realize that even though the sale price was on the shelf they forget to let the computer know and you paid the regular price.

Plus why do we all go along with the idea that we have to pay $100.00 a year to get into a place where we will spend thousands and then have to wait in a very long line so they can look at our receipt just to get out??????????

Claudia

OMG Claudia...absolutely!!!! All you said is 100% stuff that drives me crazy! OH and don't you love it if you have a day pass to "that place" and they won't even let you use it without first listening to someone's 10 minutes sales pitch! The last time I used a day pass they made me push around a basket with a balloon tied to it???? Can you guess how long I pushed that basket? HAHA!!!!!!! I have never been back and I hope I never have to go get anything at that warehouse store again as long as I live!!!!!!

Something I was just thinking and this is more cooking related is when a recipe doesn't tell you to cover the dish or not when you put it in the oven.

I can't tell you how many times I have been nearly knocked over at the grocery store by kids zooming around in healys---shoes with retractable skates built into them. They drive me nuts...and I have kids, so I am fairly tolerant.

As for baking/cooking, I am ALWAYS missing an ingredient. It drives me nuts. My husband has been keeping a hummingbird feeder and this summer he went through a ton of sugar, and everytime I needed suger...it was gone! I probably bought 30 lbs of sugar this year.

All of the above. I never use the seat of the cart for anything because of leaking children.