A day spent trying to get my papers together for my tax
return, which meant doing masses of filing, was never going to be fun. I thought I would cook something different
for supper as a reward which meant a trip to the shops.
This isn’t with the zeitgeist but I do most of my shopping
at the nearest supermarket which happens to be Tesco. I have the loyalty card and regularly get
money off vouchers which, most of the time, I forget about until too late. I
also get air miles which means I would have to spend about half a million
pounds to go anywhere (OK a bit of an exaggeration but not much).
I don’t use the self-checkout. If they offered me a discount to check out my
own shopping then I suppose I would. I quite like a bit of human interaction
and worry that one day the humans may all be replaced by machines.
However, today I only needed a few items (which were quite
exotic and difficult to locate) but I did.
I then thought I would use the self-checkout. Firstly the terminals that were free had a
message “take your receipt” – there was no receipt dangling free. Someone came and cleared one for me to use. Sorted out the bagging area etc and scanned
the first two items. Third one was a bit
challenging but I managed. The fourth
one (a bag of semolina) came up with a message to say that “this product has
been withdrawn, ask for assistance”. The
assistant came over, read the message and then tried four times to rescan it –
surprisingly getting the same message each time. All she had to do was offer to replace it
with a different brand. I lost the will
to continue at that point and left her and my shopping in the bagging area.
I then walked a couple of blocks to a Middle Eastern shop
where the lovely chap managed to understand me, translated all the
labels, found everything I needed – all surprisingly cheap. When I told the cashier I had forgotten the
coriander she said not to worry she would charge me and I should just pick up a
bunch on the way out. (Note: they even sold the chicken already cut up and
skinned for my tagine. It was delicious!)
One slightly curious thing I did see – a bag of Knorr stock
cubes with the label “Nigeria’s favourite stock cube”.
Posts
