JL
Jennifer Loke
Oct 24, 2025
Like any other true blue, Texan and Austin native, I love H-E-B. I have lived all over Austin and have shopped at pretty much every location. I moved downtown a little over a year ago and my closest HEB is the Lake Austin location. My fiancé hates it and insists we go to the Congress location, despite it being further, but I do not always have time. However, after today, I'll probably have to make the time because I just can't anymore with this location. It's been small annoyances to big fury. My small annoyances are: their baby oatmeal section is limited to just Gerber and doesn't have any Kendamil (except for formula), same with the teething cookies and they never have boiled peanuts, a staple item for my fiancé. Those things I can work around. However, their employees leave much to be desired. My fiancé and I share a car and he gets home from work at 10:00 PM. If I need items from HEB, I rush over, typically getting there at 10:15 PM. The store is already in shut down mode at this point and many of the aisles are blocked off with pallets to be unloaded. This has on multiple occasions prevented me from purchasing items I need including formula. Again, it's the only time I can go some days, so it's a big inconvenience. Even a little room to get through aisles would be amazing. That and the employees without fail have crappy attitudes. I don't take my time, I get my stuff (that's not blocked off) and go ahead of close, but they all act like people shopping that late are AHs. They also call on the loudspeaker "you have 30 minutes! Wrap it up we want to go home!!" repeatedly with the time counting down during each call out. I understand calling out the time left, but this is just unnecessary attitude. Again, some folks can't shop until 10:00 PM and the aisles being blocked off and lights being turned off early in some aisles really slows people down and customers want to go home too. Just a thought. Throwing it out there. I've had the cashiers be extremely rude and even forget to ring up coupons when I provide them. Each time, I keep my cool and go on my way. They've had a long day, I get it. That all aside, today I almost lost my cool. My son ran out of his essentials this morning and I couldn't make it last night, so I took my lunch break (around noon) to swing by HEB to get formula, baby water, and teething cookies. I get to the checkout and the closest opening was a self checkout lane with a cashier at the end. I put my three items on the conveyor belt and noticed there were no reusable bags. I began checking out, hoping to get the attention of the cashier (short, Hispanic, young with a really long ponytail). However, there were 2 ladies in the opposite self checkout as me purchasing TV dinners and the cashier was bagging their items and chatting with them. No biggie. I finished and still no word from her. When the women walked off, I asked the cashier for a bag as carrying my bulky items out without one would be hard. She told me she could only bag up "uncooked meats and stuff". I explained that there were no reusable bags located at that lane so if she had one, I'd buy it. She just shrugged and looked the other direction. I was in a hurry, but was livid. I had to awkwardly carry my purchases down the whole time wishing I'd just grabbed a bag from around her or called a manager. Seriously, I don't know if the employees here are jerks because it's the uppity location and they feel a sense of entitlement or because they deal with entitled people each day, but all I wanted was a bag for my baby items because none were available before I checked out and she decided to help out others (who were NOT buying raw meat), and not help out the mom juggling baby products in a bag-less aisle.