Giant Food — Local services in Alexandria

I have given this Giant location many chances because it is the closest one to my house. However today was probably the last straw. I went today at 10:30 to get their sale on rib steaks. Buy three and you get them for $7.99 a pound. Great deal! Get there and there was one couple ahead of me and they could not find the rib steaks that were on sale. They asked the meat department and a lady brought out five rib steaks. The couple in front of me purchased three of the five. When the lady put out The five rib steaks she didn't put them in any particular spot. She just laid them on top of other meat. So I look at the two that were left and I'm thinking okay there's no place for their sale steaks. So I ask the man behind the meat counter if they had more rib steaks that they had on sale. He brings out one more. so if you want their sale items you literally have to ask them for them at 10:30 on the first day of the sale. They also had on sale their farmland bacon. They had about 7 lb of bacon out none of the thick cut which is advertised on sale in addition to the regular. 90% of the time and I'm not joking 90% of the time when I look through their lettuce or other vegetables they are way past their prime. If I go to their deli the people behind the counter are not helpful, they're not happy, and don't make it a good experience. I don't need someone to entertain me, but I would like them to at least be engaging with their customers. I like to use their self-checkout guns. I don't think that's the right term but you can use their guns to scan your food as you go along. I was there one time and none of their guns were charged and I even asked the manager and he's like oh yeah we had a glitch in the system but I'll get somebody to reboot the system. I waited and checked back multiple times throughout my shopping and it never happened for 45 minutes. It'd be one thing if this store had engaging employees, but most of them just don't care. I know right now during covid-19 they are overworked and I'm not looking for someone to be my best friend, but their employees generally are not engaged, appear to not care to be helpful, and it has been a long time since I've had a good experience doing my grocery shopping at the giant on...

The way the Mayor and City Council are handling Duke Street traffic (by blindly turning an eye to the cause of it being the poor infrastructure and design of Alexandria West End not accommodating to the surge of cut thru 395-495 Marylanders and the lack of N-S/E-W connectivity coupled with the skyrocketing growth of Mark Center and Carlyle Center) have made shopping here impossible between 12:00pm and 9:00pm most days.

Couple that with the unbelievable decisions to place DASH, WMATA, ACPD, and ACPD fleet headquarters all within two blocks at the one of just two of aforementioned arterial intersections and you've completely made the off peak hours that much more difficult.

Lastly add in the various exit requirements like no right on red with the ACPD sitting there pulling people over at 5am on Sundays or the new red light turn cameras and what should've been motivated by traffic reduction is clearly now quote obviously motivated by revenue generation as there's other such points on Duke that have similar traffic laws that are time boxed as this one should be.

At the end of the day, the incompetent city government since the new mayor Justin and his holy on high attempt to stop cut through in his neighborhood so his children can play in the street has pushed all the traffic onto Duke and this 20year three properties owning resident to put up for sale and move out of the area into a NOVA community that doesn't elect government contract PMPs as their part-time mayor.

Yes Alexandria mayor and City Council are part time, non paid positions for some too. The motivation and caliber of those attracted to such are unfortunately what the now similar size.to Saint Louis, MO city of Alexandria,VA has to suffer...

This USED to be a decent store but it is now so poorly stocked that it has become UNRELIABLE in terms of being able to get everything needed for the week like I could in the past. The Pandemic is OVER as are all the "supply chain" issues from 2-3 years ago. Yet, when I go into this store now 3-4 years after the Pandemic, I still see over-priced seafood of low quality that has been sitting out for DAYS and looks "old". $14.99/lb for scrawny old looking crab legs that will probably give you food poisoning. The toiletries aisle: half the shelves for shampoo, hairspray, soap, liquid soap, first aid, etc are EMPTY - constantly. Example: Today, ALL the Robitussin (all varieties) was GONE. Just nothing but EMPTY space. Not only will you find the shelves EMPTY, stuff either is never restocked or not restocked for WEEKS or MONTHS. They don't order a regular, continuous supply of products to keep stuff "in stock" , they literally WAIT for each product to "run out" before bothering to order more, resulting in "bare" shelves everywhere to the point it's depressing. The shelves in this store look like "2020" all over again. Basically, if I go to this place now, I spend a good portion of my trip opening my phone and adding items I couldn't find in the Giant to my AMAZON Fresh/Whole foods cart so I can get what I need without all the hassle and having to run to other stores for missing items. VERY poorly managed the passed couple of years. And, people wonder why brick & mortar stores keep going...