I love Texas but not HEB

Recently I decided that I wanted my grocery dollars to stay in the state of Texas rather than go to a company based in Ohio like Kroger. With this in mind, I decided to give HEB a chance. Central Market down on Westheimer is a great place to shop and the few times I've been to our new HEB out here in the sticks, they seemed to have excellent selection in the produce and seafood departments. The latter being an important factor to a person on a pretty strict diet plan. The following is the GOOD and BAD of my HEB experience.

The Good

• You won't ever have to worry about finding a cart. There are about 12,000 on hand.
• Produce is the first stop upon entering. Makes sense to me.
• I don't have to use a customer card to get the lowest possible price.
• Everything I've had from their On the Go cafe has been quite good.
• Large selection of seafood and butcher items.
• Very nice cheese selection.

The Bad

•  Off the top of my head, I don't know what I pay for apples at Kroger but $14 for 10 apples seemed a bit out of whack.
• Placing the butcher and seafood counters as the second places in the store is ridiculous. Who wants to pick up their flounder fillet and carry it around in a shopping cart for an hour. Personally, I don't like giving salmonella a head start on me.
• The self weigh & label stations are a fine idea unless only a third of them are operational to speeding up the shopping experience. Plus any decent, well trained checker can ring this stuff up much faster than I can.
• Why can't I buy fresh non packaged chicken in your butcher shop? Do you mean to tell me I can buy some nice veal and a bison steak but can't buy some fresh chicken breast?
• As I made my way past the butcher and in to the main aisles, my first thought was "this place was organized by a drunk chimp." I'm sure he used a scientific customer study in making his decisions but a drunk chimp none the less.
• I'm sure if I needed one, I would appreciate the 15 shopping larks but when I'm stuck in a shopping traffic jam. Not so much.
• Bread in the middle aisle? I blame the chimp.
• So after going up and down each aisle three times I determined that HEB doesn't sell tomato paste or Melba Toast. At this point, I'm not sure whether to blame the chimp again or if this is HEB's way to telling the Brits and Italians to F@#$ Off. 
• My checker Boris was simply a delight. Remember my comment about a decent and well trained checker? He didn't meet either qualification. He was quite adept at playing grab ass with the sacker Brittany though. 
• Ah Brittany, what can I say about Brittany? Not only did she appear to not want to be there sacking groceries, she said it and then proved it. Between rounds of grab ass with Boris, Brittany liked to spend her time opening my bottles of baby shampoo, smelling them and then shoving them in Boris' face so he could smell them too. Once Boris finished ringing me up and our transaction complete, I then got to stand there a full three minutes while Brittany found the will to finish sacking my groceries. 

 The final score, I love Texas and I want to do my part to keep my local economy and that of my state growing and strong. What I don't love is an inefficient, unpleasant shopping experience and that's what I had at HEB. Looks like I'll be putting the Kroger shopping card back in wallet.