Grocery Shopping Woes

So, what's wrong with shopping now? Well, my first complaint is space, between aisles, and between registers, and the permitted use of not only the end of each row shelves, but they have to add islands to the places where there was once room to pass another cart.

But my biggest complaint now is that it is apparent that they think that we as a group have forgotten simple math. We've been conditioned to believe that if there are three sizes of a product offered then the largest container will be the lowest price per ounce/pound/sheet or whatever the measurement of volume is for that product. But that isn't so anymore, a couple of examples:

Paper Plates - Package of 100 plates for 99 cents, and then the Value Pack of the same plates, in a package size of 300, for $3.69. Which is $1.23 per 100. This is a value pack?
Sour Cream - 12oz package is 6.14 cents/oz while the 24oz package by the same manufacturer is 7.04 cents/oz. . c'mon, , Gimme a break folks, ,

I can do the math, and since the stores are required to have the little tags indicating the price/oz, or whatever the standard of measurement is for the item, posted at the items location it isn't all that hard to ensure I buy at the best price for what I want and need. It is just extremely annoying to have to do that for each and every purchase.

This may seem to be a trivial point to be upset about, but considering that I weekly spend $100.00 on groceries, or about $5,200.00 a year, it adds up rather quickly and is an insidious manner in which to separate me from my money. Plus, it takes advantage of the person with less time to spend shopping and do the comparison shopping. Picture the mother, or as in my case the father, of a family with 3 or more kids who is buying the larger bulk items in the standard belief that he is saving money by getting these sizes, only to know that they are indeed being ripped off by an unscrupulous seller.

Now, the logical thing to do would be to just go somewhere else to shop, but after visiting all of my local grocers I found that this is a common practice among all the grocers I visited, not necessarily the same items, but the same mentality.