Giant

Pharmacy price fraud: Giant pharmacists, and Giant pharmacy staff, refuse to price a prescription medication unless the customer agrees to fill and purchase. Price fraud is a crime.

Conveniently located within walking distance of my girlfriend’s apartment. It gets the job done, and we never have issues with getting what we need because Giant usually has it stocked. The negatives are the small parking lot (sometimes we drive there), and the service is a little slow from time to time.

This giant has a good flow about it. The one thing I don’t like is the small parking lot. Be careful when you go (rush hour/​after work) because it can be hard to park. The parking lot can fill up fast and people don’t always respect the parking lines. Then, once you get in you don’t see that many people. Hmmm, maybe the neighborhood residents park there.
It’s never super crowded and the shelves are well stocked. It is a smaller store so the aisles are shorter and you might not find everything you’re looking for. It can be difficult to get out of the parking lot because of the traffic on Washington Boulevard. So again I suggest going during off peak hours.

This Giant has one of the worst salad bars I have ever encountered. They frequently run out of lettuce during dinner hours. Moreover, all of the salad bar items get contaminated by each other. Giant should be embarrassed. They should remove the salad bar all together if they are going to neglect it.
Giant has competitive prices and a good selection of everything you need. The salad bar is disgusting.

The reason this is a 5 star review is because I just asked the nice man behind the seafood counter where turkey bacon is. He was so friendly, upbeat and helpful I was completely blown away. Thank you sir– your positive attitude turned my crazy «run in the closet grocery on my lunch break» in to a happy experience.

The service here has been bad for a long time, but today took the cake (not that I’d buy a cake here). I had occasion to deal with the person at the front desk, and her attitude from the first moment was that she was going to STRAIGHTEN ME OUT and. .. PUT ME DOWN. (No, I was not trying to return anything!) There is just no excuse for treating a patron that way.
Then, when I went to the self-​check-​out, I needed some help. I raised the item in question to show it to the person handling those check-​outs (there were few customers there) and she saw me but declined to come and help (voted with her feet). So I had to leave my stuff there and walk over to HER. (I am a senior citizen.) She eventually sort of solved the problem.. . but I will be avoiding this store in the future even more than I already had been.
Why can’t Giant teach their employees seven important words: «Good morning (afternoon, evening), Ma’am (Sir) — may I help you?» The employees don’t even seem to realize that they are SERVICE workers.

Such a small dumpy giant. They were running out of things on Sunday. I just thought what a derpy giant. Really tiny and things are kinda just scattered everywhere

Having lived with crappy grocery stores in NW DC, I am thrilled to have a full size, full service Giant. Open long hours, friendly and competent pharmacy. I’ve had good experiences with both self-​checkout and cashiers. I’m able to avoid peak crowds, so I don’t have any issues with parking or lines, though I see where others might.

I decided to write a review for this specific Giant location because it does deserve more than 3 stars. I am emphasizing the location because I’ve been to other Giant stores in the area, and they were much worse.
First of all, I love Giant-​brand products. Surprisingly for myself, I have been buying more of their stuff, and there are two reasons for that: the price and the quality. I get things like orange juice, Nature’s Promise soy milk, Nature’s Promise chicken, toilet paper, and a lot more of Giant brand products. I admit that not everything they make can compete with other generic brands, but a lot of their products are winners. Note that Nature’s Promise is the Giant’s brand of natural/​organic products. Keep it up, Giant!
I also like Giant’s sales. I never leave the store without a couple of bucks in savings with the Giant card. And even regardless of sales, I normally spend there much less than when shopping at HT.
Giant’s deli department is pretty good too. The staff is very nice and helpful.

I’m not a fan of the Giant grocery store chain in general. Simply because I don’t know where anything is and I am not aware about their products.
Besides produce I really don’t buy much from giant. The produce section here is lacking in winter. In summer I’m not sure.
This Giant seems clean enough. They seem to have a pretty nice dessert bread and pastry section. Which is bad for me.
However an awesome thing about this Giant is their drink selection. This giant is one of the few places where I can find two brands of sodas that I love. I had been searching for them for years until I came here.

I live in the Ballston neighborhood and have been here for 15 years, and my husband for 30 years. This store has been «Our Giant». I have always loved the convenience and the helpfulness, kindness, personalities of staff, and the smiles of everyone I see there.
Today, I learned that my most very favorite cashier, Von, has been «let go».
That young man didn’t have a mean bone in his body. I’m so disappointed, I don’t think I’ll go to this Giant again for a long time. I think they should re-​think their HR procedures. Von may not have been the most educated person in the staff, but didn’t it tell you anything, Giant Management, that he always had such long lines that you had to call other people up to run registers just because he had so many fans?
Seriously, every day I went to your store and got to see Von, it MADE MY DAY. Which word didn’t you understand? IT MADE MY DAY. I couldn’t wait to go back and see him the next time. He is a sweetheart and was always advocating the benefits of using the Giant card, and how much money I had saved over the year, and also when I needed to go get an extra special bonus he reminded me I needed to go to the Customer Service desk and not just walk out.
I’m sorry you guys have to run your business like this.
I will send letters. I’m very upset about this. Whatever you guys found as reason to fire him, shame on you. SHAME ON YOU.
Be careful what you say about people. What goes around comes around. I’m praying for Von now, I hope he finds an EXCELLENT outstanding job now and will be a manager and will dust how you guys treated him.
Patty Bristol

I live in Arlington and I have the option to shop at Harris Teeter, Whole Foods and Trader Joes. The reason I continue to Shop at this Giant is that Hoai runs the self check out like a boss. Incredibly efficient!

It’s a typical mediocre Giant grocery store, but the checkers here seem to be even slower than normal. For the average grocery trip, go to Trader Joe’s another 2 miles east. The only reason I come here is to get specific brands of products that I want to use in a dish I’m making.

I don’t buy food from here. A lot of stuff isn’t rotated properly. I’ve found expired products, quite a few times. Produce looks like it’s been played around with. The refrigerator & freezer items don’t feel close to accurate temperature. The meat & seafood dept. No, just no. Only 5% of the staff is helpful. This location is a roller coaster.

I’ve been a big fan of self-​checkout at this Giant. I can just scan and bag and usually be on my way until this past weekend. The software on the self-​checkout stands has been changed. Yesterday I bought $ 90 worth of groceries and expected to just scan the exit bar code, swipe my credit card and be on my way. Unfortunately the machine didn’t like my «phone number» that I use to identify myself at Giant and after an employee tried 3 times until successful getting me identified the software kept hanging. I repeatedly had to wait for an employee to unlock the machine which was an all round horrible experience just trying to get out of the place. I would like to say Giant «upgraded“the software but that just isn’t true. It appears Giant just threw the new software onto the machines for customer testing. That’s probably a lot cheaper than actually having to pay for software QA testing! The new software is quite user unfriendly, the labels used on the buttons and the workflow just don’t flow well. At points in the workflow the machine just freezes. Evidently, this software wasn’t tested very well and just slapped onto the machines for the store employees and customers to deal with. I went back today to buy a few items and noticed the store has signs on the machines asking customers to bear with the change of software. I gave the machine another try and got a little further before it froze and an employee had to unlock it.
If you shop here and are in a hurry, it might be best to use the checkout lines for a few months until the old software is put back in place or the new software is tested and debugged by the customers using the crappy, new software system.
Giant might consider having the software designers work a week in the store helping customers check out and use that knowledge and experience to go back and redesign the workflow into something that is easy and intuitive to use. All we are trying to do is check out and pay for already scanned groceries… not sign up for healthcare! It shouldn’t be that hard to have an easy workflow for scan/​bag and pay customers.

Good typical Giant. It has a wide selection.
It is larger than the Giant on Lee Highway and offers more products. However, if you are purchasing fresh produce, I recommend the Lee Highway Giant.

I actually drive a bit farther out to this location because I prefer this Giant to the Giant in Lyon Village.
They have a larger store and wider selection of food, not to mention the pharmacy is great and the blonde pharmacist that works there is such a babe and so nice! I like this GIANT because I think they have a great selection of meat– always fresh and often on sale.
I came a few weeks ago while they were renovating and that was a clusterfuck and I was a bit stressed by everything being out of place aka not where I know I can find it. Fast foward, I stopped by last night and really like what they’ve done. Store was upgraded, more self check outs, new checkouts, everything was clean and organized… rearranged but I’ll get used to it I’m sure.

This Giant Supermarket has everything that I’ve learned to dislike about Giant Supermarkets in one convenient location: even the sale prices aren’t competitive, items regularly ring up for more than the listed price even though I have their bonus card, and the staff hates you.
Although I don’t have a car, if I did I would be better off setting it on fire than trying to park in this Giant’s parking lot, although that’s in part because I’ve noticed that everyone in northern Virginia is terrible at driving.
I continue to patronize this store because it is convenient, but I wouldn’t go out of my way to shop here.

Nice neighborhood store. Not a huge place but has all the essentials.

This was quite possibly the weirdest Giant ever. Definitely one of the strangest grocery stores I’ve ever set foot in. Yeah… ever. The layout is flat out bizarre. And I do mean BIZARRE. Crazy bizarre. It felt a little like the Twilight Zone. Especially when you added in the 50s soundtrack that was playing.
Nothing made any sense and none of the aisles were in any sort of standard grocery store order. And the items in the aisles didn’t always go together. We spent a lot of time wandering around trying to find things. It eventually became a joke. «Where’s the Panko bread crumbs?» «Probably in the aisle with the condoms.» That is literally how bizarrely this store is laid out. It was so nonsensical that it kinda became fun. Er, at least funny.
And then there are the strange toys and other gadgets that line the top of every aisle. Some of them were things I had never ever seen before. Why not pick up a mini Japanese fake etch-​a-​sketch while shopping in the pasta sauce aisle? So crazy strange.
They did have the fabulous hand scanner system, which I am a HUGE fan of. So between that and just the sheer hilarity of it all, I’ll give it a 3. There were definitely a lot of items I find at other Giant locations that this particular location lacked. And it’s just a crazy location.