Unpredictable. Unfocused. Just like life.

PIcking up again on Seth Godin's "We don't care, we don't have to" post, I thought I'd relate my experience at a supermarket in Waterloo, Canada called Real Canadian Wholesale, a member of the Loblaw Companies Limited Real Canadian Superstore chain.

Real Canadian Wholesale advertises itself as a competitor to Costco, but with lower quality merchandise and generally the same prices at other Loblaws supermarkets. There is also no membership fee.

We were picking up a couple of things when my wife saw a cooler bag that she liked. The person in the department didn't know the price. We waited about 15 minutes for someone to show up who knew the price. When she finally showed up, she didn't know the price. Rather than scan the code to determine the price she just told my wife that she had never seen the bag before and couldn't help her.

We gave up and went to the checkout and paid. I then noticed that we had been charged $16.98 for the cast iron patio umbrella base that was clearly marked $14.98. I went back to the cashier, who just ignored us. I was then told that I would have to get back into a checkout line to get my money back.

Having had enough, I asked to see a manager. Surprise! There isn't one. The cashier attempted to find someone for me to talk to. After waiting five minutes only to have nobody show up and no indication that anyone would we finally got our refund and left.

Why don't they care? Because in Canada there are only two supermarket companies; Loblaw Companies and the smaller Sobeys. The Sobeys store near us has less stock, so they no people are usually stuck with Loblaw Companies stores. Basically they know that no matter how bad they are people really have no choice but to shop there.

In fact, they are planning on building a new superstore near the current one. When they do so they plan to close their sister Zehrs store in the regional mall near me. And they have a clause in their contract that means that there can be no competitive supermarket in the mall so they have eliminated the possibility of competition. Or course the city of Waterloo has no problem with this. Of course this is the same city that is against a new Wal-Mart on the edge of town. Wouldn't want too much competition now would we.