Is spring cleaning taking place in my local supermarket? It seems the aisles are often clogged with workers moving products and crowding the aisles with shopping carts,milk crates,and shelving making shopping akin to running a gauntlet. My favorite aisle with ice cream was not spared this confounded treatment the other day. There were two busy guys unloading ice cream from the freezer cases and loading the products in shopping carts making navigating through this fiasco a shopping obstacle course. Why are they doing this? Termites? Freezers not working again? This was a reset going on which is basically just changing the order of the products. I counted 30 doors of ice cream. One poor soul seemed to be resetting 13 doors of novelty items himself with wagons and milk crates filled with products on both sides of the aisle.

I saw gazillions of cones and pops and fruity treats that would make for some Good Humor but this scene was anything, but funny. Why aren't more people helping I wondered. I found out there were other members from this team of merchandisers but they were resetting a huge section of yogurt in another aisle at the same time the ice cream was being reset. Oh Oh. It looks like Chobani Flips over Dannon Greek Yogurts. It seemed to me that more people should be working on this ice cream reset so that the ice cream is not sitting out and melting all day which is what I observed or at least be put an empty freezer or end cap to load the product before it melted. Couldn't the yogurt be reset another day so the ice cream can be moved more quickly and efficiently.? Somebody had decided these resets had to be done on the same day. Their philosophy must be what's the big deal if the ice cream melts and customers can barely move in the aisle.

One of these merchandisers told me that often sections being reset get packed out by a night crew the night before or even earlier the same day of the reset. Now doesn't that sound ingenious? Everything just packed out on the shelves has to come off the shelves. The store personnel is informed two weeks prior to the reset but often the store managers had no clue this reset team was going to be there. That seems kind of far fetched that the store manager is not aware a team of merchandisers will be moving products in several aisles of the store. There seems to be a lack of communication ,to put it mildly.

Wait ..What's all the excitement in the health and beauty aid aisle? A male stripper? Is the store giving away free samples of K-Y Jelly? No. It's the nightmarish deodorant reset. Holy Right Guard. The Secret is out. Don't even Axe what a horror it is to do this reset. I'm sure the workers would Ban it if they could. But why the same day as ice cream and yogurt with what appears to be a skeleton crew? But getting back to my ice cream: what would you do for a Klondike Bar? Well. I'd beat a Nestle Nuts Over Caramel Cone Drumstick to death for a Reeses Peanut Butter Cup Klondike Bar. I noticed that the fudgicle and popsicle arch nemesis, the Italian ices had changed shelf heights and zip code locations.

How do I know so much about these resets? I have a confession. I'm a member of one of these merchandising teams who do this heinous work: an unappreciated, thankless, underpaid, redundant and usually unnecessary job. Adding a few new items and taking out some discontinued items is fine but does every item need to be moved and every shelf need to be adjusted about every 12 weeks ? I don't think so but whoever makes the plans we follow wants to make sure that customers get inconvenienced as much as possible. Now I eventually helped out in this ice cream quagmire several hours later. I was resetting some dairy creamers and then making room for new products in the baking and pet aisles. Of course somebody decided it had to be done the same day while the ice cream sat out of the freezers for hours melting. There's just not enough help in the aisle to get the job done faster. If you like to purchase your ice cream that has melted and then refroze,that's fine. Personally, I think it is insane and borderline criminal to subject workers and shoppers to such lunacy. Have you ever had frozen pizza that had melted and then refroze. Yep. Same nonsense goes on in all the frozen sections.

But who am I to complain? My sincere sympathies to Breyers, Edys, Friendly's, HaagenDazs, Ben and Jerry,and other of my favorites. The only Turkeys on this Hill of a melting cornucopia are us hard working peons. But somebody has to do this work. Frozen Yogurt pops anybody?