Start-up offers frozen-pea-finding app

Really?

So they can navigate you around a supermarket where the supermarket owners won't play ball can they? And how well will their database keep up with the fact that a lot of the less obvious items move week on week then?

Major items like frozen peas or bottles of coke will stay pretty much in the same place week on week. Less popular items get moved about to cope with the dominance of bigger items. New line of baked beans meaning more shelf space needed? OK lets move the refried beans to that space on aisle 12, which will displace the condensed milk to aisle 9. And so on.

It's not the popular items that shoppers find hard to locate. Firstly because it's generally bloody obvious where they are and secondly because they buy them most weeks. It's the items like condensed milk that take the time, because it's not obvious what they will be near and because the shopper might only buy them once a year. An app that knows where the frozen peas are would be worthless. An app that knows where to find some of the weird shit my wife asks me to pick up? Priceless.

Nitpick time!

"rather than interact with the surly youth stacking shelves."

in my experience the yoof in American supermarkets skip up to you with a gigantic smile and declare their willingness to help you in any way at all, quite possibly up to and including taking a bullet for you. I assume they're like this on pain of losing their jobs (and hence all medical benefits for poor little Britney).

"ask for nine-inch nails and the result of your search will depend on the kind of shop you're in - though initially it will be the hammered-in variety as supermarkets and hardware stores are the focus for the company."

again, zero points for Americana savvy: supermarkets are the leading retailers of physical music media in the States these days. So you're just as likely to be buying nine inch nails of the (semi) melodic variety.

Title not needed

I think that the Tesco app is great. I probably use it every week, but then I'm one of those odd people who think that it would be logical for Bovril and Marmite to be on the same shelf, not at opposite ends of the store.

Having said that, data accuracy is everything and even the Tesco app sometimes can't keep up with the incessant, apparently random, movement of products.

Supermarket shenanigans EXPOSED

IT'S ALL TRUE! I once worked in a supermarket stocking shelves, and sometimes they'd have us spend an entire night shift, especially on the weekend, moving items from shelf to shelf, just to make it harder for people to find what they'd come in to the place to buy. Seriously, there's nothing more entertaining than watching a frustrated mother of four completely lose her rag in the middle of the paper-goods aisle and throw a frothing wobbler -- dropping bricks off a freeway bridge just doesn't begin to compare!

Oh, wait, no, actually, we didn't do anything like that at all, because that would be fucking stupid. Instead we took the boring, predictable option and put things right by other things just like them, in the aisles where the signs said they should be -- you know, like how you always seem to find the butter in the dairy case with the other butter, not halfway across the store in the butcher-shop cold cases because we thought it'd offer better cross-selling opportunities with the meat.

(Though admittedly, if you've never taken an extra-rare steak, salted it, and seared it in butter until the outside turned crispy, you're missing out on a culinary experience fit for a god. Top with melted bleu cheese, bacon, and mushrooms sauteed in the bacon fat for something that'll get gods to convert to *you* -- and so what if it clogs up your pipes? Everybody dies of something or other, so why not enjoy yourself on the way?)

Honestly, has it ever occurred to some of you that you might have an easier time of it in the grocery store if you spent less effort on concocting elaborate conspiracy theories to explain why you always need a half hour to find your favorite brand of shrimp-and-mango-chutney crisps, and a little more on paying attention to where things are so that you don't have to figure it out entirely from scratch the next time you take it into your tiny little heads to wander in the front door? Or would that cut into your all-important Foursquare time?