Genius and Genuardis

Saturday night I saw what was billed as a dance show at Annenberg Center. It was the Nikolais /Louis Dance Company. The first piece, a 1965 composition called Tent was one of the most amazing things I've ever seen. I can't really even describe it, though there was a review in Saturday's Inquirer. I think there were 10 dancers and a large round piece of parachute cloth with a hole in the middle. The "score" was all experimental synthesizer sounds (Alwin Nikolais bought the first Moog Synthesizer, which was the first commercially available music and sound synthesizer ever made) and the lighting looked like a Jackson Pollack painting, in different colors depending on where the dancers were on the stage. The used the cloth as a tent (duh), a place to change costumes, a costume for 5 dancers, and piece of scenery that dancers moved around and through. I've never seen anything like it. The guy was obviously as much a production designer as a choreographer and an absolute genius at it.

Sunday morning, against my better judgment, I went to Genuardis. All I can say about that store is that it makes me think in something like Dr. Seuss language, specifically, "I hate this store with a hateful hate." And no, I'm not prone to lapsing into Seuss talk, but I really do despise it. Why, you may ask, and why do you even care about a supermarket? I happen to really like supermarket shopping. I have since I was a kid and that had a lot to do with my choosing advertising as a career. But back to Genuardis...

Setting aside the fact that there prices are generally higher than the other supermarkets,

1. They have been reorganizing and/or renovating since the day Safeway bought them. The latest took all the produce racks and turned them at an angle so the pointy side faces you as you walk up. This is bad feng shui. Nobody likes walking at something pointy. And there's no logic to where things are. Maybe garlic tastes good with tomatoes but every other supermarket in the country puts garlic next to the onions.
2. I'm sure some guy in headquarters walks around muttering about "maximizing shelf space utilization" or something like that, and the way they've chosen to increase their shelf space is to stick shelves in the middle of the aisles. I wonder if this guy puts a sofa in the middle of his hallway at home, in order to maximize sitting utilization. If you can't get through it easily with a shopping cart, it's not a functional aisle.
3. They have a computer terminal at the entrance to order your deli items. You spend a couple of minutes there, do the rest of your shopping, then you go to the deli and they say "Oh, we haven't done that yet. Wait until I'm done waiting on this person her and I'll take care of you." To paraphrase Jerry Seinfeld, taking the order is the easy part, it's filling the order that's hard.

There's more (candy in 4 different places), but not worth the effort. And I understand that these are but minor annoyances that should not be filling my heart with fury. The thing is, my goal when I go to the supermarket is to get everything I need in as little time as possible, preserving my leisure time for, well, it doesn't matter what I want to save it for, I just know I don't want to spend it waiting for some guy to figure out what kind of toilet paper to buy (and why are there so many kinds of toilet paper anyway?) because there's a display of english muffins in the middle of the aisle and I can't get around him.

I don't know what the people in charge are thinking, and considering the constant changes, somebody is thinking of something, but it's not genius.