This appeared here during a supermarket strike in Los Angeles in December of 2003. It was on 12/11/03 to be specific. When the strike was settled, the local news was filled with stories that the markets regretted allowing it to happen; that they lost way more than it would have cost to settle, including a lot of steady customers who migrated from the struck stories to the unstruck. A few years later, perhaps as a means of luring back those shoppers, Ralphs got a lot better than it had ever been…and I wasn't the only one who noticed that.
Each year at the Comic-Con International in San Diego, I host this fun panel called "Quick Draw." We get Sergio Aragonés up there and Scott Shaw! and two other swift cartoonists and I throw challenges at them. It's kind of like Whose Line Is It Anyway? with drawings and without Drew Carey, Ryan Stiles, Colin Mochrie, Wayne Brady and a very large staff of comedy writers billed as "Creative Consultants." Anyway, the cartoonists in the "Quick Draw" panel have overhead projectors putting what they sketch up on large screens so everyone can see. This year, kidding around during set-up, I started sticking items from my wallet under the lens and I projected my Ralphs Club card. For those of you who don't have the privilege of membership in this esteemed organization, it's a card you flash when you go to a Ralphs market. You get a few items at a discount and they get to chart a profile of your buying patterns. Deep within the Ralph's corporate headquarters, there's a computer that knows exactly how many Skinny Cow ice cream sandwiches I've purchased there and what flavors.
Sergio, being Sergio, grabbed my card and in about 1.8 seconds added the little editorial cartoon you see below. Since then, when I hand the checker my Ralphs Club card, I've gotten a wide array of snickers and giggles, plus some odd reactions. One checker actually asked, "Is that the guy from MAD Magazine?" Another insisted on calling the Manager over and showing it to him to make certain that we had not voided the card with Sergio's enhancement. (The Manager laughed out loud.)
It turns out Sergio was anticipating my recent experiences with Ralphs. There's a supermarket strike on in Los Angeles and it's not going well for anyone, except maybe the markets that aren't on strike. The union struck the Vons chain which is part of a coalition with the other two major retail outlets, Albertsons and Ralphs. The latter two locked out the union workers and the strike was on. After a month or so of no progress, the union withdrew its pickets from Ralphs, figuring that it would put pressure on the other two markets if their main competitor wasn't suffering as much. The move does not seem to have made much of a difference. A month later, the strike remains deadlocked and Ralphs has lost $145 million in third quarter sales because of the strike. This may be because even without pickets, customers don't want to go to a non-union market…or it may be because they've gone and discovered that Ralphs is now a terrible, terrible market.
I've always done most of my shopping at Gelsons anyway, but Ralphs is handier for a few items. Last week and today, I stopped into different outlets and found, first of all, that the shelves were only about half-filled. The Ralphs I went to last week was out of most kinds of bread. The one today didn't have any carrots. These are not exotic items. At the one last week, I bought a chicken and while the date stamped on it was still in the future, the chicken turned out to be seriously past-tense and went into the garbage as soon as I got it home.
Today, the checker mixed up my purchases. I bought one can of cranberry sauce and was charged for two. But then I also bought a can of soup for which I wasn't charged, so it almost balanced out. I bought twelve packages of luncheon meat, got down to the car and found they were not in my bags but about six items I hadn't purchased were. I took them back and the bagger realized he'd mixed my purchases in with the lady after me, who went home without her flour or her dishwashing liquid but with a dozen packets of honey-roasted turkey she may not have wanted. There were a few other screw-ups but basically, it was a pretty unpleasant place to market. No wonder they're down $145 mil.
While I'm at it, I might as well mention that I have a pre-strike bone to pick with Ralphs. Last July, I won a prize in their "Great Escape" promotion, which gives me two free nights in a hotel in one of 38 cities. I was given a voucher and told to either mail it in with my choice of city or phone the "Reservations Center." The voucher told me I had to do one of these two things by August 15 and I would receive my prize. It further said, "All travel must be completed by December 15, 2003." So I tried phoning the Reservations Center for two weeks and received naught but busy signals. Finally, around August 6, I got a recorded announcement that said they were no longer processing vouchers via phone and that I should mail it in. I mailed it that same day and that's the last I've heard of my free vacation. When I called the Reservations Center throughout September and October, I got a new recording that said that prizes would soon be mailed out. Mine has never come, the Reservations Center number is now a disconnect, and when I recently called the main Ralphs office, I got a lady who said she didn't know anything about any contest and that everyone there who might was too busy because of the strike to talk to me. I'm hoping they're out stocking the shelves with bread and carrots.