Grocery Shopping: Part 1 of a Sensory-Alert Walkthrough

Last week Autism Support of Kent County, the organization I volunteer with, was invited to the corporate office of the Meijer, the local chain of super grocery stores. Meijer is hoping to make their stores a bit more sensory- and autism-friendly. I was invited along (after asking if I could be), and so in order to be properly prepared, I took a trip to the store I usually shop at.  There, I walked through the whole store, doing a slow but thoughtful shopping trip.

I came away with six pages of stream-of-consciousness notes, and roughly two dozen pictures.  After getting home, I condensed those into four topical headers and organized the information into those.  After that, I put together a very hurried and extremely unpolished presentation, which I will, I suppose, re-publish here with apologies to your eyeballs.  I'm going to do it in two parts, because otherwise it's too long.  

Before I begin, please understand this is a single store I visited, not the chain at large.  It's one of the stores I shop at, in large part because it carries so much of what I need, at reasonable prices.  There are a lot of good things about Meijer that may seem ignored in the tide of criticism I offer here.  Check the second post, which will cover Sounds and Store Policies for a lot of those.

I haven't made Powerpoint-esque presentations for, um... something in excess of seven years.  Things have slightly changed when I wasn't looking, and I wouldn't say I was good at them in the first place.  You'll see what I mean later.

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For lighting, I was trying to get the basic understanding for design choices across.  Natural light or at least incandescent light over fluorescent lights.  Warm, soft white lights over harsh blue white lights.  No flickering lights.  These seem obvious to me, but I guess if you've never stared directly into those awful new light blue headlights or into an LED light strip on a dark night, you might not know what I'm talking about.

Naturally, fluorescent lights are the cheapest for retail businesses by a hefty margin, so this normally falls somewhat on deaf ears.  When researching the subject, I did run across instances of teachers putting films or sheets over their fluorescent lights, which possibly moderated the flickering and humming.  So that's something.  

These particular overhead lights were of an unusual design.  They had a single, bright (probably fluorescent) tube bulb, facing UP.  The rest of the light was a curved white surface, which reflected the light out and down.  I'm not a person that can actually see the fluorescent lights flicker, so I can't be sure that this design was meant to reduce that effect... but it does seem unusual and intentional, so that's certainly something.  

The lights themselves were... much too bright, honestly.  The reflections would bounce off every plastic-wrapped item, every glass item, and every polished surface (like, y'know, the floor).  See the lower picture there?  The reflection of the overhead lights is visible in every single package of meat.  The end result was rather painful once I focused on it.  Dimmers would be a good option here, if the store wanted to be more sensory-friendly. 

LED light strips.  I hate them so much.  Whoever invented them has earned the swift kick in the pants I have saved for them.  They are very often the horrible piercing blue-white variety.  

Meijer, as it turns out, makes copious use of these light strips.  I found them in every refrigerated section, all over the health and beauty aisles, and even in special displays in the food and electronics areas.  Now, to the store designer's credit, many of these light strips were not visible from an adult's height and perspective.  They'd installed them facing away from the customers, or blocked the immediate view of them with a plastic strip.  

The issue, of course, is that these precautions don't shield children, who are lower to the ground and have a different perspective on the displays... and it also wasn't sufficient to keep me from spotting them, because several of them still managed to stab me in the eyeballs.  The next time you see a kid screaming on the ground, apparently having a tantrum, look around for light strips, flickering lights, or obnoxious sounds.  It might not be a tantrum, but a meltdown caused by so many awful and painful sensory inputs.  

There was one exception to the "light strips are awful" rule, and I couldn't manage to get a good picture of it.  The refrigerated juice aisle had these long warm-colored light strips that had been shielded entirely.  This allowed them to emit light, but reduced the eyestrain to the point where I noticed no pain while staring directly at them.  It was really nice, and I hope it becomes the standard everywhere.

Another thing I found and hated with light strips: the ice cream and frozen food sections have those tall upright freezers.  Those are fine.  However, they decided to install motion-activated lighting in those upright freezers, so when you walk by, everything brightens up.  This is highly disorienting to me, and I hated every minute of it.  I actually had no idea why I felt so disoriented in the freezer section until I did this walkthrough and noted the motion sensors every 3 freezers on each side.  Hate it, do not want.

Something that didn't make it into the presentation was spotlights.  I think I'd meant to have them, but just... didn't.   In my defense, it was well past midnight when I was working on the presentation, and I'd had roughly 24 hours' notice that  this meeting was happening, and that I was coming.

I squinted at this flickering spotlight for about a full minute, trying to decide if it was malfunctioning or if this was intentional.  The flickering was quite regular, and wasn't making extra sound, so I got the sense that it was intentional.  Obnoxious and possibly dangerous to people with epilepsy, but intentional.  The whole spice display flickered with light, as a result, which I think was to make it stand out more.  It was kind of like poking me in the eye repeatedly.  Needless to say, I am not a fan.  

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We're going to skip over Sounds this week to jump right into Smells.  You can see from how lengthy the bullet points are here that I'm very out of touch with how one makes a presentation.  I really just wanted to have my thoughts organized.  

As a general sensory-friendly rule, you want zero odors in a public area.  The nose can't cause you pain if it has nothing to react to.  Odorless cleaning products are my friends.  Even pleasant smells, like fruit, flowers, or baked goods, can cause pain and sensory overwhelm.  My doctor actually gets bad headaches from flower-scented things, even though basically everyone likes flowers.

Obviously, in a grocery store, this is only so possible.  The perfume aisle, the scented candle aisle, the cleaning products aisle, the can/bottle return, and the bakery section are going to have smells.  You can use odor neutralizers and air purifiers around and in those aisles to help, but the fact remains, those places are full of smelly things.  And worse, those things are often purposely made with porous packaging (the material has tiny holes in it) so you can smell the product and decide if you want it or not.  

In the walkthrough I did, the trouble spots were actually pretty good, with one exception: the bakery.  I've read somewhere that stores like to pump canned "fresh bread" or "baked goods" smells into their bread and bakery departments, and I'd bet my comfy blue slippers that Meijer is no exception.  I got a strong noseful of "baked goods" smell when I stepped into the packaged snack cakes and cookies section.  Which is curious, since, y'know, they're in packages, and I was still like 10 feet away.  

Historically, though, the can and bottle return is malodorous in the extreme, to the point that even people with normal senses avoid the place.  This location had the entrance to it located right in the entrance to the food, unfortunately, which I can guarantee will make it Bad Times in summer.  

I'm not really sure how the store handles that, but the entry to the return area is unimpeded by sliding doors.  Adding sliding doors, or establishing a breeze going into that room, which is then pumped out of the store, would probably be a way to handle it.  I'm no engineer, though.  

When I shop, I tend to avoid all the trouble spots I've mentioned here, simply because I know they'll be unpleasant.  The discussion brought up the idea of mapping those trouble spots, as well as any quieter or safer areas in the store, and having those maps be available to parents and anyone else with an interest.  I think that's a good idea overall, and I'll go into that idea and some related ones next time, when I talk about Sounds and Store Policies.