Wegmans — Local services in Town of Union

In terms of quality of produce, products, and items sold, this place has some of the nicer things in town. It also has the largest gluten free section out of all the stores in town. Further, something grocery unrelated, but there is a toy train that runs along the ceiling in the back from a track.

However, I do wish there were more affordable opportunities here. They sell all of the regular bells and whistles everywhere else sells as well, but at the price they charge for their premium things. Deals do not stretch as far, and it is hard to locate coupons for them. It is also a relatively busy store, so for those who may have sensory issues or children who do, this store may not be a good environment, especially on the weekends.

Finally, the strangest thing about this store: The workers will follow you. For reference, I am white, and often alone when in Wegmans. Sometimes though, I come with my housemates, one of whom is not white. I notice that when I am alone, and especially with my one housemate, workers will follow you through the store. I already have anxiety, so after the first few visits I realized maybe it’s just coincidence. But one time when I was in a side aisle by their gluten free area, I noticed a worker also nearby. No matter, I thought, I was busy reading labels (nut allergies are a horrible thing to have when you also have celiac’s disease). I was there reading different boxes and brands for nearly ten minutes, in which time I kept picking up and putting back items, like how I normally shop, again- to read these labels so I don’t poison myself on accident. The worker stood there the entire time. Back and forth watching what I was doing, or when I would turn to look their direction they would busy themselves “organizing” a random shelf. I ended up finding what I was after and left to check out, and noticed they had followed me up to self checkout. Nothing was said to me, or to any other worker. They just watched me ring things up from afar and watched me pay and leave. It definitely left a bad taste in my mouth, and put me on alert for whenever I come to this store to pay attention to what the workers do around me. It made me feel strange being scrutinized like that. I came back a few weeks later with my housemate, and as we meandered through the front and towards more of where the ciders were kept, I saw we were being trailed again. This time, up to self check out, and when we were paying, another employee hovered the entire time, staring even after carding us when my friend was inputing their pin on the keypad. She was staring when the machine popped up for the ID check, something both my friend and I expect anyway. Eventually she moves and processes the ciders for us and cards us, but the delay told us there was something odd going on. We both looked at her and waited for her to react to the machine since we knew that she could see what we were seeing in real time too. Definitely strange, and weird. Stuff like this happens pretty much everytime I go in- I notice workers hovering or finding reasons to be beside me. It weirds me out, I am not a thief, I am not stealing from here, yet, at a minimum it feels like I am being babysat when I am a grown adult in a supermarket. It is to the point that this reason is a huge one in why I usually avoid Wegmans these days. Weird vibes, high prices, and not a lot to work with in...

My family love Wegmans. It has great selections of everything we need. It’s clean. The prepared food tastes fresh. The items with Wegmans brand are well chosen. They usually are high quality things with the best price.

The other great thing I’ve noticed was the fact they did take customers’ opinions. I wrote several suggestions years ago, and I’ve seen lots of improvements they’ve done since. (E.g. do more recycling at their own cafeteria, providing thicker toilet papers so that customers don’t end up destroying a whole roll per use, selling non-colored seaweed with a label “No Artificial Color added” so then those who only picked radioactively bright greens will understand what the real color may be and choose wisely...)

Now, if I may hope more. First, I hope they’ll finally renovate the restrooms. They only have 4 or 5 for the ladies which cause crazy jam every Sun. The restrooms are at the entrance of the store which means the jam is for everybody. Just think how much quicker the customers will be able to get out and how much energy you can save by doing that, in the long run, it’s good for everybody.

Second, I hope there’s a better way to run the shopping carts around the cafeteria seating area. The current policy is to ask customers not to bring shopping carts in there. However, customers just randomly park their shopping carts right around the entrance area to the seating zone. That’s another huge traffic jam.

Third, this is a long run, and it’s gonna face lots of technical difficulty pursuing. I have no expectation on this one in the near future: If Wegmans could clear a zone for customers to line up before going to the cashiers, provide lights of numbers for the customers to go directly to the next available cashier, it probably will save another traffic jam which are caused by customers going back and forth between cashiers. (It’s crazy sometimes when there is a cashier open that no one else knows and other lines just keep getting longer and longer because the customers assume no availability beyond the existed lines.) If this is hard to understand, perhaps a visit To Whole Foods around Columbus circle in NYC will help you(I hope that Whole Foods is...

Wegmans chooses conflict avoidance over employee and customer safety. So disappointed in Wegmans in Johnson City. Last Friday 7/3 while making our weekly grocery shopping trip to Wegmans we were passing and following several young people in the isles who were wearing masks without covering their nose putting at risk customers and employees. Masking only works if everyone not only wears them, but wears them properly covering both nose and mouth. So I wrote to Wegmans expressing my concern about not enforcing proper masks wearing to protect customers and employees. Here is the response I received:

Hello John,

We strongly encourage customers to wear a face covering while shopping in our stores in accordance with any local or state mandates. We are focused on complying with these mandates, while keeping the health and safety of our employees and customers a top priority, and that includes minimizing the likelihood of conflicts in our stores. Short of refusing entrance to our stores, we are doing everything we can to educate our customers of the mandate and stress the importance of voluntary compliance to keep themselves and everyone around them safe. We have put a number of social distancing measures in place throughout our stores, however we continue to follow the guidance of the CDC, which recommends people wear a face covering when out in public to help slow the spread of the virus.

Sincerely,

Lisa Customer Care Specialist

Wegmans seems to be more concerned with avoiding conflict than they are in protecting the safety of customers and employees who wear masks properly to protect others. Remember, the mask you wear doesn’t protect you receiving the virus, it limits the transmission by you to others when you are asymptomatic. If you think this is over just look around the country where like Florida, Arizona and Texas where wearing masks were not made mandatory. If you think infected people from these states can’t travel here, think again. The only way to keep yourself reasonably safe is not to subject yourself to public places where others are not wearing...