Paranoid about stores and restaurants keeping track of you

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I've always been paranoid about that. I hate it when people remember me. It's just creepy to me. I know that restaurants keep track of customers. I'm wondering if stores do the same thing. I sometimes feel like I'm being watched by people who work at the store. It doesn't help that I live in a small-ish city. I wish I could live in a larger city so I could be more anonymous. I don't want one bad day to cement my reputation. I just want people to let me go shopping in peace.

I feel this way too. I use to go to a small grocery store about a year ago and some of the cashiers there discriminated against me so I quit going there. It doesn't happen as much in bigger stores.

Me too!
I feel like it's nobody's business to track my shopping or eating behavior.
I'm even worrying a little about items containing hidden electronic chips that could be read anywhere and idenfify me.
"Ah, it's the guy with those boots again...". f**k.

*but I mean grocery stores have cameras everywhere, so...

Kind of hard for the grocery store I go get my groceries from not to remember me considering I go there once a week and I live in a medium sized town that has 15,000 permanent residents, not including college students. It's more of "do they remember me from when I worked their" that has me worried. A few people do even though I've grown my hair out and have facial hair now.

They can't really 'track' you if you don't use checks, credit cards, or their discount clubs. I always pay cash unless the purchase price is over $300. I also fill my prescriptions only at the pharmacy run by the same group that my physician belongs to, thus not spreading my medical data over multiple systems.

I find a lot of things to worthy of paranoia these last few years. I went to fill out 3 online job applications. They all used "third party resume collection" services. Each one required me to 'sign in' through 'one of my social media' accounts. I only have a LinkedIn account. They didn't want quick access to my resume or job history or anything else. They wanted access to *everything*! ! My contacts, my email, everything.

So, yeah, I think everything is being tracked and categorized. And, it ain't just how you pay for things.

Oh, you actually mean people remembering you.
Like, the waiters remembering your name and stuff like that.

Well, where I live there's only one small supermarket and I know the faces of the employees and they probably know most of the regular customers' faces. I don't feel bad in any way that they recognize me.
Although I try to avoid them and often don't greet back when they do, they already know I'm "weird". I'm not paranoid about that either.
If I knew that I'm being closely watched by a store clerk, that would really freak me out, though.

Just don't shop in small towns. Everyone knows each other.

I think social media networks like Facebook are far worse. I don't care if some store tracks my purchases, that isn't something that a future employer is going to be able to search and use against me unlike f*****g Facebook.