Magazines in Grocery stores

[roemer]

I heard someone describe a practice they have begun in grocery stores. If they finda magazine cover objectionable ( e.g. Cosmopolitan) they turn the cover around.

Is this practice honest ? Does the shopping public have a right to rearrange the storeowners stock and cost the storeowner time to fix it again ?

 

[Dr.Colossus]

Would it be dishonest or sinful to approach the store owner and engage him in 5 minutes of conversation about why you don’t think it’s appropriate to have suggestive material in his store? No, it would be a laudable thing to do. You’ve sent him a message as a consumer, even if it costs him money by wasting time he could be working. Now, if you take 2 seconds to deliver your message instead (by turning a magazine around), and the manager takes another 2 seconds to turn it back around (assuming he disagrees), I don’t see how that could be wrong either.

Of course, if you get obnoxious about it, and waste 20 minutes turning every single magazine around, then it’s a different story.

 

[_pro-life_teen]

I feel better now, I used to think I was the only one who would do that (flip the magazines around)!

 

[Jason_Hurd]

How about just not looking at the magazine cover? No one’s putting a gun to our heads and forcing us to look.

 

[Dr.Colossus]

Jason Hurd:

How about just not looking at the magazine cover? No one’s putting a gun to our heads and forcing us to look.

I think either option would be fine. With actively turning the magazine, however, you are delivering a message to the store owner that one of his/her patrons do not approve of the message the store is sending.

 

[Elizabeth_B]

Jason Hurd:

How about just not looking at the magazine cover? No one’s putting a gun to our heads and forcing us to look.

Many people have kids with them in a checkout stand and would prefer not to have to explain the headlines (which can be pretty disgusting and descriptive).

 

[ktm]

Elizabeth B.:

Many people have kids with them in a checkout stand and would prefer not to have to explain the headlines (which can be pretty disgusting and descriptive).

What a sad state affairs we find ourselves in when going to the grocery store to buy food exposes our children to pornography.

 

[Dr.Colossus]

Elizabeth B.:

Many people have kids with them in a checkout stand and would prefer not to have to explain the headlines (which can be pretty disgusting and descriptive).

This is sadly all-too-common now. I used to work at an Eckerd Drug Store. You have no idea how many times I’d have to just give the parents a sympathetic look when their children looked at a Cosmo magazine and asked “Mommy, what’s a G-spot?”. When I worked the evening shift, when I was cleaning the store after we closed I would often re-arrange the magazines on the rack so that the more offensive ones would only have their titles visible.

 

[Miss_Piggy]

A poster said “no one is forcing you to look at it”. I don’t know where he shops, but at the stores around here, the magazines are right next to where you have to put the cart in order to unload it onto the checkout counter. If you have kids in the cart, that leaves them right next to all the filthy, disgusting headlines and pictures. At least if they are going to sell them, they should put them where I can avoid them if I so choose. I have written store managers on more than one occasion and gotten results! Try it! A large Catholic family can drop a bundle in the grocery store over the course of a year and they do listen (sometimes anyway). I like one store in our area that has a black piece of plastic that comes up over questionable covers so that all you can see is the title. If you really want the magazine, you can still see it’s there, but no one is forced to look at it while waiting in line and unloading their cart.