Food Lion — Local services in Durham

This has always been one of my Favorite Stores!! The Staff is Super Friendly & Helpful. The Produce is excellent & the meats are high quality at a great price!!! Today is March 31st, 2025. I visited Food Lion on 55 & had a very "Nasty" experience. There was a Female Cashier that the manager told me is Ashley. As I approached the register I greeted her by saying "Hi". She glared at me & ignored me. Thinking she didn't hear me, as I got closer I repeated "Hi" again she looked like I was bothering her, very politely, I say, "Hi" again. She finally says, Hi in a low irritated way. Since, I seldomly get bad energy from Workers I'm smiling at. I was confused & my stomach dropped. So I asked her if she was ok!? She answered telling me that she did not feel well. I rolled my buggy to another line, but noticed another register with no one waiting. Before I could say Hi, Alexis greeted me with a cheerful, "Hi". I started to relax & fell better immediately. The not feeling well female, was looking at her phone as Alexis swiftly rang up my items. I couldn't help notice her making trips back & forth to speak with a Youngman as she played in her braids with one hand while holding her phone looking at it in the other. I told Alexis I wanted to speak to the Manager. He came over & was very pleasant & listened to me tell him his Cashier had a really NASTY attitude. As I'm telling him, she's got her phone open scrolling & in between going back to talk to the young man like she a yo yo on a string. All the while, Alexis is hustling & helping me get things out of my cart. I am 69 years old, & I treat Young People the way I would like my Grandchildren to be treated . The way the Female with the Nasty attitude treated me was like I was invisible. Or too old to know she was being NASTY!! 🤮 She treated me like I didn't matter. I'm so disappointed. In my many years, I've worked with people like this one. They don't value their job. They don't respect their Manager or Superiors. They do enough to get by. And they chase good customers away. They bring moral of other workers down. They don't have any respect . My total was $415.59. My Husband spent over $400. Last week along with stopping in spending $200 every few days or so. We took custody of 3 children & they came out of horrible conditions, where they were abandoned without food for days at a time. So we keep everything stocked up & it is nothing to spend over $600. A week in this Food Lion. I will be calling Corporate in the morning. I don't want apologies, or gift cards. I want People like Alexis to be recognized for doing an outstanding job. I also want a remedy for the ones that chase customers away, the ones who don't have a good work ethic or personality to work with the public. Alexis asked if I needed help out & I said, Please!! A Youngman helped me out & was cheerful & happy to load my groceries. He most likely needed some fresh air. As anyone could see that Ashley was smothering him, like she was sucking all of the air out of the store!! I hope to not see her again. Because as I mentioned, Workers like her, will bring a store to it's knees. I think that explains why the parking lot & store was so empty. It's already happening!! I could not thank...

Convenient, decent prices, caters to a less affluent customer base than some, so meat quality and availability of more pricey cuts of beef is low. But, good basic grocery.

Update: parking lot looks freshly covered and painted today (01/17/24) and the shopping center front fascia look to have been brightened with either an excellent power washing or id suspect recent painting (probably both).

Food Lion now has their express pickup service properly marked and equipped in the lot, and the new self-checkout is corralled and better queue management with more stations (upgrades from 4 to I believe six or more now).

I also noticed somewhat better stock in the meat/seafood department, but the online pricing was both not correct at the register on various items and none of the meat/seafood signage had been updated at 8am Monday morning (online app indicates their sales/pricing/etc updates weekly on Mondays), but the prices did ring correct for the advertised VIC and e-coupon deals at checkout for meats (not so perfect for soda, gallon+ bottled waters, or sports drinks), and generally the store seemed to be past the appropriate deadline to be ready to open this Momday morning with current VIC signage deployed or even normal price tags placed clearly near the relevant stocked items. The outdated VIC signage looked to have been pulled down as priority, but posting new signage before opening apparently was the victim of staffing resources im guessing, as checkout wasn't well staffed or monitored, hence I checked out without assistance on pricing disparities or challenges trying to split payment methods, but I too was short on time so I paid a bit too much and paid with different methods than desired due to lack of available assistance and impatience preventing my seeking out an employee in some other area out of sight.... Before I was done bagging and departing, the attendant did return (from apparently being lured away to assist another customer, one of about 4 in the store at the time).

So, some things better, some not yet better. But, hoping store management finds or trains enthusiastic capable staff (to supplement what seems to be demoralized short handed staff when I visit, often near open or close as my habit). The store definitely needs their hidden talents among staff celebrated and nurtured and adequate new staff for those unsung heroes to mentor and an effort to champion a culture shift towards customer appreciation, self-motivated ambition, store pride, and ownership of community perception and experience...

Never will I ever shop this store again. And if you care about your safety you shouldn’t either.

Never in my life have I seen such woeful leadership. Today, while waiting in line, I witness a near-assault when an 80+ year-old Vietnam Veteran encroach on the 6ft social distancing radius of a man in his 30’s/40’s. The younger man began to yell profanities at the older gentleman, and then proceeded to describe all the ways he intended to kill him in vivid detail. I’ve honestly never been more scared in my life. The younger man then (ironically) got up in his face and I feared I was about to witness an brutal assault (that he had just described). As a nurse, I knew that the older man would be vulnerable to many fatal injuries with even a small shove (he seemed to have an unsteady gate and was steadying himself on his cart. The grocery checker did nothing. The management was not called until several minutes later. No security or police were called. To my horror I felt if I didn’t do anything there would be a murder in front of me. Being accompanied by my 3 year old twins and pregnant I assure you intervening in an altercation was not something I wanted to do. Of course as soon as I intervened I became the target of the irate man’s wrath. He told me how he would drag me from the store, and then used vivid details to describe his plans for my death laced with every profanity I’ve ever heard. My children had to listen to this and my son, pointing his finger said “that’s a bad guy mom. He’s going to kill you.” By the grace of god, and the prodding of his wife, the man eventually left the store.

Where was the management? Where was the security? Why was the checker not trained to de-escalate and quickly call security and management. Everyone just stood there. No one did anything. When I asked to speak with the manager he said “we weren’t there until after he left.” Seriously? That was it? No apology. No intention to hear or report the story. Just a deflection of blame. Yuck.

Moral of the story? If the management doesn’t care to ensure the safety of their customers, and doesn’t take responsibility for their total failures, they will have blood (and major lawsuits) on their hands....