Peace breaks out in Supermarket Wars
Well, not exactly peace, more a kind of stand-off, or ceasefire, or state of armed neutrality while two sides glare at each other across the frontier.
The supermarket experience has been better since I resolved on some kind of truce a few weeks back. Not that they have mended their ways at all. There are still the same absurd issues of stock control - if that's not a misnomer when the whole thing is so chaotic that control is non-existent - I should say, what they decide to stock and what not. In some aisles you can have any kind of choice of product, provided it's weird and exotic. Thus you can get lemon and coriander flavoured nuts, forsooth, (at a price, goes without saying) but bog standard salted peanuts - no we're not stocking those. In the same aisle, however, there are shelves upon shelves of mega-packs of garbage crisps (prawn cocktail flavoured reconditioned potato snacks, or whatever) but almost no other savoury snacks. Elsewhere there isn't even a pretence at choice. Moist toilet tissues? It's Sainsbury's own brand, or nothing.
One reason I thought things were better, was that I seemed to have found a time when the store was quieter. It wasn't today. Maybe the busload of the slow and indecisive - those who creep past you as you're pulling out, then stop directly in front of you - had just arrived. There were a lot of them about, anyway.
But it's still worth persevering. The key thing is attitude. I must remind myself of why I wanted to do this. There was a character at the checkout that day who was complaining to his wife about everything: the store, the staff, the stock, the way they keep moving everything around and you can't find anything. Made Victor Meldrew look like a mild-mannered young lamb. I thought, "My God! That's what I'll turn into if I don't change my ways!" A kind of Ghost of Christmas Yet To Come experience.
The supermarket experience has been better since I resolved on some kind of truce a few weeks back. Not that they have mended their ways at all. There are still the same absurd issues of stock control - if that's not a misnomer when the whole thing is so chaotic that control is non-existent - I should say, what they decide to stock and what not. In some aisles you can have any kind of choice of product, provided it's weird and exotic. Thus you can get lemon and coriander flavoured nuts, forsooth, (at a price, goes without saying) but bog standard salted peanuts - no we're not stocking those. In the same aisle, however, there are shelves upon shelves of mega-packs of garbage crisps (prawn cocktail flavoured reconditioned potato snacks, or whatever) but almost no other savoury snacks. Elsewhere there isn't even a pretence at choice. Moist toilet tissues? It's Sainsbury's own brand, or nothing.
One reason I thought things were better, was that I seemed to have found a time when the store was quieter. It wasn't today. Maybe the busload of the slow and indecisive - those who creep past you as you're pulling out, then stop directly in front of you - had just arrived. There were a lot of them about, anyway.
But it's still worth persevering. The key thing is attitude. I must remind myself of why I wanted to do this. There was a character at the checkout that day who was complaining to his wife about everything: the store, the staff, the stock, the way they keep moving everything around and you can't find anything. Made Victor Meldrew look like a mild-mannered young lamb. I thought, "My God! That's what I'll turn into if I don't change my ways!" A kind of Ghost of Christmas Yet To Come experience.
posted by Tony at 7/02/2004 06:00:00 pm
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