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A Nation of Shoppers
Dec. 22nd, 2006 09:46 amTiming your visits to Tesco's is a work of art. You try to be one step ahead of both other shoppers and, indeed, Tesco's itself. The major aims are to shop (a) when Tesco' s thinks there will be more people shopping than is actually the case and (b) when it isn't relatively busy.
The former reduces the time you are likely to have to queue at the check-out, while the latter reduces the "get out of my fucking way" factor when you are doing your actual shopping.
I did most of my Christmas shopping last Monday, but, inevitably, a few items were forgotten. So, with a sinking heart, I timed my visit this morning so that I would be reaching the check-out at 9.05am, just after most of the main day-shift has started.
Although this reduced the queueing at the check-out time, the "get out of my fucking way" factor in the supermarket itself could not be avoided. The fresh fruit-and-vegetable looked like a no-go area from the Lebanon (that's the bit in Asia, not in Indiana, my mid-west blue collar friends), with bodies, metal and random scatterings of blasted fruit everywhere.
Some moron driving a disablemobile had clearly decided that picking one of the busiest days of the year was a good time to do her shopping, thus taking up two-thirds of every aisle she inhabited. Others, even worse, were shopping in packs, like crazed hyenas, accompanied by baby hyenas whose main aim was to jump out backwards to block your way, endangering their lives more than yours, just as your cart was approaching at a rate of knots.
Meanwhile, everyone was buying enough stuff to last them through to next Christmas, rather than just a couple of days. "Ahh", they might say knowingly, "but we are having people over".
But, well, let's get this straight. There's only the same number of people in the UK (in fact, there are fewer, since many are spending their Christmas stranded at Heathrow Airport. Hah hah, I say) as there usually are. So, unless people are suddenly eating six times as much stuff as usual, is there any reason for shopping trolleys to be loaded in a fashion that would feed a family of 30 for a month? OK, extra booze, understandable. But Tesco's had run out of rice (well, the rice that I buy, ordinary American long-grain).
I began to wonder if this wasn't ordinary Christmas shopping, Had there been a news item on Radio Five about a nuclear bomb going off in central Asia as a result of destabilisation in Turkmenistan? Did all these people know something that I didn't? I thought of asking a nearby shopper whether we were in imminent danger of a nuclear cataclysm, but then I thought better of it. Best not to worry her, I decided.
Eventually I returned home with my items forgotten from Monday and locked to door behind me with a sense of relief. Fuck 'em, I thought, that's the last time I have to leave this place until December 29th.
The former reduces the time you are likely to have to queue at the check-out, while the latter reduces the "get out of my fucking way" factor when you are doing your actual shopping.
I did most of my Christmas shopping last Monday, but, inevitably, a few items were forgotten. So, with a sinking heart, I timed my visit this morning so that I would be reaching the check-out at 9.05am, just after most of the main day-shift has started.
Although this reduced the queueing at the check-out time, the "get out of my fucking way" factor in the supermarket itself could not be avoided. The fresh fruit-and-vegetable looked like a no-go area from the Lebanon (that's the bit in Asia, not in Indiana, my mid-west blue collar friends), with bodies, metal and random scatterings of blasted fruit everywhere.
Some moron driving a disablemobile had clearly decided that picking one of the busiest days of the year was a good time to do her shopping, thus taking up two-thirds of every aisle she inhabited. Others, even worse, were shopping in packs, like crazed hyenas, accompanied by baby hyenas whose main aim was to jump out backwards to block your way, endangering their lives more than yours, just as your cart was approaching at a rate of knots.
Meanwhile, everyone was buying enough stuff to last them through to next Christmas, rather than just a couple of days. "Ahh", they might say knowingly, "but we are having people over".
But, well, let's get this straight. There's only the same number of people in the UK (in fact, there are fewer, since many are spending their Christmas stranded at Heathrow Airport. Hah hah, I say) as there usually are. So, unless people are suddenly eating six times as much stuff as usual, is there any reason for shopping trolleys to be loaded in a fashion that would feed a family of 30 for a month? OK, extra booze, understandable. But Tesco's had run out of rice (well, the rice that I buy, ordinary American long-grain).
I began to wonder if this wasn't ordinary Christmas shopping, Had there been a news item on Radio Five about a nuclear bomb going off in central Asia as a result of destabilisation in Turkmenistan? Did all these people know something that I didn't? I thought of asking a nearby shopper whether we were in imminent danger of a nuclear cataclysm, but then I thought better of it. Best not to worry her, I decided.
Eventually I returned home with my items forgotten from Monday and locked to door behind me with a sense of relief. Fuck 'em, I thought, that's the last time I have to leave this place until December 29th.
