Supermarkets Suck

“Would you like someone to pack your bags for you” muttered the adolescent tie skewed spotty kid at the checkout. “Er no” I replied. I’m sure it was company policy to try and pretend to be helpful. But then again if I can dress myself in the morning and feed myself in the afternoon, then surely, I can pack my own bags. Maybe if I was a drooping, mumbling, dribbling old man then maybe, just maybe, I may have said “yes”. I maybe I am most of them, but I stopped dribbling last year.

So past the forced “Hello” they give you if you are lucky and past the bag question. “Have you got a Tesco Clubcard?” came the next training day number two question. “Look, if I had one of those I would have put it in the lovely slot that says ‘Tesco’s Clubcard’ or even placed it on the till, or maybe, just maybe, I would have given it to you when I gave you my other card”. “And besides, why would I use a card that gives me a 1 pence voucher whenever I spend a pound? All you do is collect my personal shopping information, send out a few vouchers for tinned beef and then cause me to annoy other people when paying for my food with fifty vouchers that are worth ten pence”. Well that’s what I didn’t say, I actually said “No thanks” but the thought was there.

There is nothing good about food shopping. Full stop. It starts by trying to find a car parking space that hasn’t been double parked by some wonkey offender who uses their car to do the once a week shop. You then start to analyse which cars are mostly likely to leave a scratch on yours when they leave. You can tell a lot about people by the cars they drive you know. And then there’s the frustration of thinking you have found a space, only to find a stray shopping trolley there instead. Get out and move it? No, move on more like.

So get in with the three tonne trolley with one wheel that always moves in a different direction to the others. Supermarkets have a great way of putting all the things you really want ahead of all the boring things you don’t want but need. Forget the sweets, the magazines, the televisions, the gadgets, Move On!

Just like the car park outside, all sense of how to push a trolley completely disappears once you are in a supermarket. The old ladies spend most of the time looking at the aisles rather than look ahead, causing me to do last minute swerving manoeuvres to save their crushing eggs. This is then followed by that awkward head on situation. Who moves out of the way? And, in which direction? The result is inevitable. You turn right, they turn left and you end up grill to grill.

I can take most aspects of shopping in a supermarket. The one bit that still bemuses me is why we walk around for an hour putting things in a metal trolley, only to take them out all again to put them on a conveyor belt? Surely technology should just allow us to put them in a trolley, walk past some scanners and pay for it as we leave?

So find a queue that by the law of all sods will always end up being the longest. Found one. Oh no. John is on training. Double no. Susan the middle aged housewife who thinks that buying Organic food is good for her as just pulled out thirteen club card vouchers, a chequebook and a suicide note from me. And just like most people, who have stood looking into space for the last twenty minutes in the queue, she has just started looking for these things right at the last minute.

Finally my turn. I line up my four items. Wait for it………..what are they going to say?