A grocery store epiphany

My grocery store issues have been well documented on this blog, so I won't spend a lot of time rehashing them, but will just dive right into today's experience, and the epiphany that it led me to.

Today was a particularly difficult trip to the grocery store in terms of dealing with the spatially unaware and totally zoned out. However, I ran into one class of offender several times throughout the store - that being those people who were stopped (and not just momentarily, like getting or looking for an item) in places where you just can't stop for any length of time. Most noteworthy were the two ladies who had parked side by side on the left side of the one aisle and were yacking it up (now, they were plenty polite when I had to get something where they were standing, but still), and the woman who had stopped with her car pointing sideways right at the end of an aisle and was going over her list.

As I was going through my general mental grumbling regarding this situations, suddenly it hit me! I don't know about your grocery stores, but no matter how massive the grocery stores get around here, there is almost invariably no dead space anywhere in the store where you can stop and not be in the way. Any place you stop for more than a second or two, you're either blocking one of the racks or displays, or you're obstructing a walking area. So, my proposal is have "empty" space at one end of each aisle - just a nicely decorated wall or something like that, where people can pause and talk and collect themselves without inhibiting those still actively shopping.

Now, I'm sure you're all thinking what I've already thought - what percentage of people are actually going to make the effort to go to those areas if they exist? Well, it may be more than you think, but I'm not overly concerned about that. Why? Because even if people don't use them, it will make me feel better about the things going through my head when I encounter the loiterers if there's actually a place there are supposed to go to do that!