my town's main export is sand and gravel, and some of their trucks say "follow 500 feet or more behind--we are not responsible for broken windshields," too. that makes me so mad. i guess i should put a sign on my car or bike or body that says "stay out of my way--i am not responsible for accidentally running into you." >:/ non-compliance is like signing a waiver, right? so much nonsense.

i don't have a lot of use for the idea of "private" businesses. they aren't actually private. they're wholly supported by consumers and--if they're getting any kind of a deal from the government--tax money collected from taxpayers (i.e.: us). the store near my house is a kroger store (freddy kroger, as my music history teacher called it), but their service is fantastic. if they piss off their customers, they're going to lose money, and their corporate people are going to give them hell for it. i just hate the idea of some commercial force creating authoritarian policies at our expense, when WE pay THEM. i guess there are two sides to that, though: if we give all our money to a cut-rate grocery store, we're going to support bad customer service, and have no recourse when the other stores go out of business and this cut-rate store refuses to let us carry personal items while we're shopping.

i don't know about other places, but in portland and the surrounding area, safeway is kind of neurotic about customer service, so if there's a problem in another store, maybe you could go to safeway, or if there's a problem in safeway, call their corporate people. customer service is their whole spiel, and that's why they charge more than other places (again, maybe this is a local phenomenon). that tactic won't work in a town monopolized by kroger, but it could work in a lot of other places. maybe also it'd be good to check out farmers' markets and little businesses like that if it's possible; you wouldn't be able to totally stop giving money to kroger, but you could limit it, and limit the time you spend in their crappy store.

i wonder about "manager discretion" because it seems like it could cause some problems if the manager's discretion leads to only certain types of people having their personal property taken from them. hmmm.