🚀 go-pugleaf

I'm curious as to whether or not anyone on here would like to share their 
opinion of the Neighborhood Market that opened in Plano a month or two ago. 
We do a lot of our grocery shopping at the Supercenter not far from it (on 
Ohio) and were pretty excited when we heard they'd be opening the 
Neighborhood Market close to us because the location's more convenient. 
However, after a few bad experiences, neither my wife nor I plans to go back 
to the Neighborhood Market again.

My gripes were:

1. The lines hardly moved at all because the cashiers spent a lot of time 
looking for produce codes on their "cheat sheets". In fairness I should 
point out that the times I was there the store hadn't been open long, but 
how hard is it to find people who've already worked as cashiers at Wal-Mart, 
especially when (according to their own store locator) there are 20 Wal-Mart 
stores within a 12-mile radius of here?
2. Half the checkout lanes were self-checkout. I admit that I'm not wild 
about self-checkout to begin with, but the fact is that when I go to the 
store I'm often getting refills of bottled water, and so I can't just scan 
the UPC code like you would with most items. To make matters worse, when I 
was there, not all the (human) cashier lanes were in service, meaning that 
the *majority* of the open lanes were self-checkout.
3. I've never thought of myself as being claustrophobic before, but the 
aisles seem uncomfortably narrow for a grocery store. It made me want to get 
out of there in a hurry, which I've always heard is the opposite of what a 
store is supposed to try to do (more time spent in the store generally means 
better sales).
4. The grocery selection at the superstore is adequate, but I found the 
Neighborhood Market's selection unacceptable; it seemed more like a big 
convenience store than a grocery store, and (rightly or wrongly) a grocery 
store was what I was expecting. Could this be the root of the problem --  
that it's neither fish nor fowl, more than a convenience store but not quite 
a real grocery store?

I was willing to overlook #1 because I figured that would improve over time, 
but the other three things I just listed don't seem likely to change, 
particularly the last two since they're limited by the space available 
within the store. I read on their web site that Neighborhood Markets are 
specifically targeted at women shoppers which makes sense I guess, but the 
fact is my wife doesn't like the place any more than I do, and she gave it 
more chances than me before giving up.

I guess the truth is that I wrote this partly to vent, but it's also true 
that I really *wanted* to LIKE the Neighborhood Market, so I'm hoping that 
someone can convince me that I'm wrong and somehow missed how great it 
really is. So please, if you disagree with me (or if you agree), I'd like to 
hear from you.