Supermarkets, do they overwhelm you ?

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Would welcome a response, even though this might be a silly question. Does anyone get overwhelmed by the vast number of aisles and array of choices in a supermarket? I find it very difficult to focus on what I am buying.
Shopping online eliminates this problem as I am not seeing the vast array of products from which to make a choice.

I get distracted easily, lose track of what I'm trying to get, and repeatedly have to check the shopping list. I get stressed out with the crowds and feel socially clumsy when I speak to the person at the deli counter. Sometimes, I just stand in the middle of an aisle, spaced out. By the time I get to the cashier to check out, I'm very ready to get the heck out.

I find the checkouts intimidating;worrying whether I am packing my stuff quickly enough especially if there is quite a big queue behind me.

In a number of the grocery aisles and especially in the laundry detergent aisle with all the vivid colors, after the first 40 seconds it often blends in to one kaleidoscopic mass.
Closest grocery store to me is a Super Walmart which as well as groceries has dry goods, clothing, hardware, and such.
The place is huge. Groceries are all on one end of the building, that helps.
For a time they had video ad players on some ends of the grocery shelving - too much, sensory overload.
They may be gone now, don't recall encountering them the other day.
Televisions are in middle of back wall of building and I try to get past them quickly if I have to go that way: too much flashing, too much noise.
Fortunately the place is open 24 hours and I can go at 2am!
Sometimes there are more people there than one would expect in the middle of the night.

The noise and chaos is more of a problem for me. I try to make a rough list before I go in. I can pick up a few new things, but focus on what I planned for meals, etc.

I do groceries shopping online, it's easier for me for alot of reasons. When I first moved out of my mom's house, this was 10 years ago, in the supermarket, I had a panic attack.

Supermarkets are a garenteed sensory overload and shut down for me, can only spend a little bit of time in there and i need to know what im buying or my shutdown will make me aimless and confused.

I think, by now, everyone here knows that I have "issues" with supermarkets

I am fine as long as I have an easy-to-read list.

If I don't have a list with me, I tend to get overwhelmed and go into shutdown. I also struggle with staffed checkouts, but can cope with the ones where you take a scanner around with you. Self-scan, I'm fine with as long as nobody queues behind me.

I have a toddler and she recently outgrew trolley weight limits (actually it happened a while ago, I just hadn't realised). So I'm now shopping online, simply because I can't focus on the task of actually buying things AND keeping control of a child.

If a supermarket is too busy I get overwhelmed, because I don't like strangers being too close to me. Children also add to my anxiety, because the younger ones hate supermarkets and are always screaming, and the older ones chase each other about in the aisles and get in the way.

I can cope better when the supermarket is less busy. I am happier, more patient, and can do my shopping better.

The smells are what get me first. If they have fruit going bad, the soap/cleaner isle, ladie perfume; then the lines, I hate people standing behind me. I was in a line once and the guy behind me grabbed my arm, I almost hit him.

I'm fine in general.

Perfectly fine if I don't directly focus on so many objects at a time on the shelves when inside an aisle. Instead, I just stare at some point or just focus on navigation and so I can let my mind organize the placement of all the objects's along with all their main sensory details without looking at them directly too much. This is hard to explain, by default my mind does very quickly organize the placement of objects and the sensory details in the environment around me but in some supermarkets this organizing mechanism sometimes could get bypassed for a short time if I were to look in the wrong way at a shelf especially if it has too many similar objects. It would be a mild kind of sensory overload if that organizing mechanism were to be bypassed for too long. That doesn't happen though especially with me ensuring the above after realizing what was going on.

Other than that no problem at all with supermarkets. Just feels like a waste of time sometimes.

Oddly, the market itself does not bother me--even the large WalMart with the music playing, all the gaily colored products on the shelves, etc. However, I DO like to go at a time when it is less crowded as the other shoppers (obviously NTs) go get under my skin. What bothers me the most tho is dealing with the cashier at the checkout. There is just too much going on to have to pay attention to. (And if the cashier is an attractive woman who I can't let her see me looking at her it makes it even worse.) My closest small grocery does not have self-checkout so it is worth it to me to go farther to the larger stores where I can do my own scanning. So its just having to go thru the conventional check out that overwhelms me.

i'm mostly fascinated by supermarkets. the options and colors can be overwhelming but they don't scare me so much because in the entire chip aisle there is much less diversity than in the produce section even though all the packages seem different. sometimes i like to investigate different food products and take a long time, other times i get what i know i like and get out fast. it's the people at the supermarket that freak me out. so i always go at like 2 am.