Cowboy Up...or Not

I really don't know what "Cowboy Up" means, but I thought it fit the title of this blog. I apologize if it has some lewd connotation to it.

Yesterday I was meeting with one of the foster kids that I work with. Her birthday is coming up next week and she loves Shania Twain. Not sure why but to each her own. So I decided to look on Meijer.com to see if I could find some cool Shania collectible thing to get her. Turns out Meijer doesn't carry a lot of Shania stuff. In fact, only one thing showed up. Her newest CD. At first I was greatly disappointed, but this lasted barely a second before I realized that I was actually glad that Meijer doesn't have a boat load of Shania stuff. Country music isn't really my thing and I'm not sure I could be quite as avid a Meijer shopper if they catered to the Twain crowd.
I then ventured to the competitors website, where I came up with 17 Shania items, including three different perfumes. Not sure I really want my wife, or anyone for that matter, smelling like a country music star.
Great job Meijer. Clearly the "Higher Standards" slogan rings true.

Friendly Associate

I was shopping at Meijer store 138 the other day, one of my favorite pastimes as you might guess by the fact that I am an avid Meijer shopper, and I had a very pleasant experience. I was looking through the vast selections of cheeses and trying to figure out which was the best deal. I typically get Meijer brand because as the commercials say, "The only difference is the price." Turns out Kraft has caught on to that and they lowered their price this week, plus I had a coupon. As I am pondering the best bargain, a Meijer associate politely asks if I need any help as she is frantically trying to restock the bags of Kraft cheese flying off the shelf. I reply that I am just weighing my options. She returns to the frantic re-shelving and I decide to get the Kraft brand shredded cheese and the Meijer brand brick cheese, thus making the job of the Meijer stocker lady even more difficult because now she has to restock two types of cheese. Still she smiled and happily replenished the selections of yellow dairy delight.

Let me know about some of your best shopping experiences. I am going to assume that they happened at Meijer, but if it was at some other store you can share that too. We'll just assume that they were influenced somehow by the Meijer way of doing things.

Here's a couple more Meijer commercials for you to enjoy.

Going Green

I am not really an environmental nut, (though my wife may argue the point because I insist on using those fluorescent light bulbs in our house and turn the heat down to just above freezing at night) but I found a new article about Meijer and their efforts to limit the negative impact they have on the environment. You can check it out HERE, or click the link to the left titled "Greener Greenhouses". Thanks.

Commercials

I realize this only makes American commercialism worse by posting this blog, but if we are going to have to live with commercials, it is at least good to know that there are some people who can make them worth while. Meijer, along with being a superior super-store, has also hired and excellent marketing company and put out some very entertaining commercials. I am currently trying to find some of the best commercials for your enjoyment. Hope you like these.

Why Meijer continues to impress me

This is kind of a boring post, no great story or exciting Meijer trip, but I wanted to share another reason that Meijer continues to prove to be a superior shopping experience.

For those of us who have insurance that pretty much only covers you if your head gets nearly sliced off, the HSA and FSA accounts to supplement medical cost have become very much a fact of life. They are very helpful, but not always easy to use. Well, now Meijer has made it a bit easier by totaling up all of the Medically qualifying expenses and putting the total at the bottom of the receipt. This makes it very easy to just send a copy of the receipt in to your FSA people and get reimbursed. Very cool!

Speaking of receipts. I never really announced a winner of the total savings challenge. I thank all of you who sent in entries. I am very proud to announce at this time that my wife, in her magical shopping abilities, managed to save $82 and spent $74. This was due mostly to the fact that shrimp was buy one get two free and we ended up with nine bags. Thats a lot of shrimp.

NEW SIGN!!

Despite all of the wonderful things about Meijer, our particular Meijer had one major fault. The price sign for the gas station was always rather askew, as in really messed up. Whomever they had putting the numbers on that thing either stood upside down while putting up the 8's or didn't pay attention in first grade. The larger circle was always on top of the smaller circle making it look like the 8 was looming over you instead of just sitting back and chillin' on the sign. To make matters worse, aside from the numbers often being upside down, they weren't even from the same batch. Some of the 9's curved around and some were very square, like on a digital clock. The sevens and twos were also of a variety of styles. Some were very thin, and some looked like someone had made them with duct tape and painted them black. So, Julie and I would always feel quite disappointed when we drove by the sign. Especially since the Wal-Mart across the street has a very nice, neat, easy to ready sign. We pondered often about writing to the manager and asking that they purchase a new set of numbers and hire someone with an elementary education to put them up. We unfortunately never got around to it but evidently someone else had the same idea because just last week our Meijer put up a brand new state of the art digital sign (evidently they gave up finding someone the put the numbers on correctly). See below for a visual. The first picture is one Julie took when the old sign actually looked decent. The second picture is of the new sign. Not sure why we decided to take them while driving by, instead of doing it while we were getting gas, so please ignore the snow on the windshield.