Which Grocery Store Do You Refuse To Shop In?

Over the weekend, the website Mashed published the results of a survey of 637 of its U.S. readers that asked which grocery store they refused to go into, upon pain of death.

A summary of the results:

Even Oprah's got a thing for Costco, which might explain why a mere 8.32% of all of Mashed's survey respondents won't go in that particular grocery chain. Trader Joe's garnered the second-least amount of nay-sayers. In total, 9.89% of survey respondents reported not wanting to step foot in that supermarket. And while 10.68% of all respondents refuse to shop at Kroger, 13.34% of all respondents won't go into Whole Foods, and 15.74% don't want to see the insides of Aldi, two grocery chains inspired noticeably more dread than the rest.

Are you ready for this? A total of 19.78 percent of all Mashed's survey takers refuse to open Sam's Club's doors. A staggering 22.29% percent, on the other hand, will not step foot into Meijer.

I do understand the prejudice against certain grocery stores. Costco terrifies me, and whenever I go with my partner, he likes to wander off and it takes me forever to find him again, so I've taken the brave stand of refusing to go. He, on the other hand, avoided Whole Foods for years based on some spurious mouse poop rumors, but really, I think, because it violates his whole self-conception as a tough, uncompromising, anti-corporate, Baffler-reading member of Generation X. (And then he discovered some hot sauce that's only sold at Whole Foods.)

But what is this hatred against poor Meijer? It's one of those grocery stores that sells absolutely everything in normal-sized containers. It doesn't have a reputation for price gouging. Or mouse poop. Mashed does not explain.

There is one clue, however: Meijer was the only chain on the list that is regional. It operates in just six states in the Midwest. So I can imagine people elsewhere saying, "Meijer? Never heard of it. Of course I'll never shop there!" Which is a completely unfair thing to do to a perfectly nice store. Why not throw in some other regional chains, like Publix or Schnucks or Wegmans or Stew Leonard's or Ralph's or Fry's, just for balance?

But now, please tell us which grocery stores you would never shop at, given the choice? We promise not to aggregate them into any definitive statements about how "according to a survey, people absolutely refuse to shop at this store."