Hate to tell you, Mr Niver, but you’ve been had. Food Lion is owned by DZA Brands, the USA arm of the Dutch company Ahold Delhaize, and it has been, at least nominally, since the mid-1970s. Only took a cursory glance at Wikipedia to find most of that — namely the Ahold Delhaize part. “DZA Brands” comes from the memory of some older discussion, I believe it was simply an overheard conversation in a store.
Nonetheless, I’ve had endless frustration at Food Lion myself. I have to shop via Instacart — Chatham Transit seems to pride itself in making ridership for all but the most obsequiously agile an exercise in profound frustration where possible at all, and Chatham County DSS’ program for homebound folks is, like the rest of the building as far as I can tell, staffed almost entirely by those who are least prepared by the part of society in which they live to understand the clientele they are trying to serve. As we’ve no other public transit services here, and I am disabled in a way that nearly ensures that I’d be a danger to myself *and* to others, of a very lethal sort, were I to take a seat behind the wheel, I remain homebound with limited transportation access. I also have almost no friends — I have Asperger’s Syndrome, a form of autism, and that will do that to you — and thus delivery services are my only lifeline to things like groceries or restaurant food.
Food Lion’s stocking is incoherent on the level of a mental condition of significant clinical concern were someone to present to an Emergency Room with it. I’ve had employees, in the distant past when I could still sort of use Chatham Transit, straight-up tell me “we fill out our order forms and the truck brings us what it wants”. That was before the pandemic… now it’s more a case of a blind archer in a forest… it’ll hit that deer eventually, but it’s going to take a while, and it’s going to hit a lot of other things first!
InstaCart is also far less help than one would imagine. I have a number of issues, one of which is a near-chronic level of fatigue throughout the day. If I’m not chugging something with caffeine every hour or so, I’m going to fall asleep, period. (Dr Dykers, I’m sure you’re reading that with concern — don’t bother, I could fill an entire medical textbook with the ways my body doesn’t conform to medical textbooks. I’m 35, I know how my body works and doesn’t and how to deal with it. I’m fine.) But I also have Restless Leg Syndrome (RLS)… I’ve found that Sunkist soda has exactly the right level of caffeine to keep me awake without triggering the RLS — cola has too much. I try to drink Diet Sunkist, but half the time the Instacart people will bring me regular, having told me it’s Diet… I don’t want diabetes! There’s no way to exchange that stuff… and that’s when I can get *any*, because Food Lion is that incoherent. I could shop at Lowe’s Foods but their Instacart side won’t take Food Stamps.
Neither corporation seems to care about the mess they leave in their wake. I’m just one dude in poverty, what do they care about me? Kind of makes me sad, though… but ultimately it’s just another entry in the list of folks making themselves useless to folks like me around here. I mean, I’ve done my best to get to where I can, you know, try being less disabled and all, but somehow it never seems to work out. Funny thing, that…
While I also have my quarrels with Walmart corporate — and their delivery service is borderline unusable because they had to be cheap and reinvent the wheel (and as they nearly always do, they did it noticeably worse than the rest!) instead of just contracting with DoorDash or InstaCart like everyone else — the specific store in Siler City is very good. I’ve had more than one associate there tell me that wages there are quite reasonable (and I have enough of a relationship, even now that I hardly get out any more, with several associates there, that I can ask that comfortably) and I can’t think of once when I’ve had anyone there be even remotely ugly to me. In fact, the only times I can think of when anyone got ugly there, it was something where I had reason to take myself to task later on!
So, Jay — maybe come this always a bit? Sure, our Walmart’s still a Walmart — but you’re not shopping at management headquarters… 😉 and when you get down to it, we’re all locals of Planet Earth, after a fashion. I’m just sayin’.
Date: Mon, 28 Feb 2022 09:11:31 -0500
From: Christopher Havel
Subject: Food Lion v Walmart, Jay Niver’s post, and other thoughts