Accidentally bought a loaf of bread that was creased lengthwise, all down the center of it like the machine had tried to cut it in half but was unsuccessful. Found the problem when I opened the bag to make hubby a sandwich. Took it back on Wednesday, June 25, 2026. The female front-end manager was so incredibly rude, they'll be lucky if I ever go back there again. She said, "So you smashed your bread and now you want me to give you another one." I told her, "No, I didn't smash it, it came that way from the factory!" She said in her snarky accusatory voice, with a fake smile on her face, that she would have Never bought a loaf of bread that came smashed like that. Pi**ed me off. I worked in the grocery business for 16 years, I KNOW how to bag my groceries and how to NEVER put your bread under anything that is going to smash it, not to mention in order for it to smash like that loaf, I would have had to balance a sheet of plywood on it or slammed a machete down onto it. And in my defense, the very outside edges were basically undamaged, so the plastic bag that it's packaged in stayed flat so that you couldn't tell that the whole center of the bread was trying to escape out the bottom of the bag. I don't stand there and feel every inch of the loaf before I put it in the cart. I grabbed one that was a row or two behind the others like my mother taught me to do, and placed it in the top of the cart on top of the bananas that also had to be handled with the utmost care to prevent bruising. Not only am I a former professional checker, but at my age I am also an Expert shopper. LOL My bananas do not get bruised. My tomatoes never get juiced. And my bread never gets smashed!
This woman has NO business being in charge of anything. If there's one thing I learned and learned well in my years in the industry, is you never accuse the customer of lying or cheating or stealing unless you have concrete proof that you are right. The motto we were required to live by was "The Customer Is Always Right." And while that is not true in real life, (the customer is Not Always right) you never mentioned that until you were hanging out with a coworker in the breakroom where you could not be heard by the public. For a while this Safeway/Albertson's had better produce than the one on TV Hwy, but the last 4 pineapples that I've purchased sit on the counter for one day and immediately start rotting. And yet they're so hard and woody on the inside, that hubby can't even eat them. They have brown rotten spots all up and down the meat inside. This last one had not one stitch of juice in it. Normally they're fairly juicy no matter how ripe they are. This one was dry as a bone. The fish department Always stinks up the place. Safeway's prices are astronomical. Their choices have been whittled down to mostly just their own store brand. Trying to find something Organic or fairly local that's worth eating in the meat department ..... I don't even bother anymore. It might be time to switch back to Fred Meyers again. If the produce is rotten, the fish department is nasty, you can't find half of what you want or need, AND the management is a complete C word ....... location and convenience is all you have left and I'm not sure it's worth it. read more