I hate shopping. I don’t hate all kinds of shopping, just the necessary kind, like shopping for groceries. I put the task off for as long as possible. I’m not the type to do my supermarket shopping every week at the same time, regardless of stock levels. For me, every cupboard must be bare, every morsel gone from the fridge before I will go to the supermarket. As a result I’ve become quite creative with tinned food and left-overs.
Lately, my local supermarket have offloaded piles of staff and installed automatic checkouts that regularly malfunction and only serve to irritate the customers. They’ve also removed the trolleys that hold two baskets and cut down on the number of small trolleys so that the customer is forced to choose between a basket they have to carry and a huge trolley, with nothing in between.
The big trolleys seem bigger and the aisles seem smaller, due to the fact that the shelf packers are always out in their droves when the shop is at it’s busiest so that the aisles are jammed with massive crates. It’s absolute chaos on a Saturday afternoon.
Then there’s the music.. invasive and completely unnecessary. I recently had the bizarre experience of seeing a man who was obviously a victim of Thalidomide shopping with his wife while Nina Simone, or someone doing an impression of Nina Simone belted out “I got my arms, I got my legs, I got my fingers, got my legs.. ” which seemed to be playing at an unusually high volume and was on a loop so that it played about three times while the poor man was in the shop.
Shopping at my local supermarket is not what it used to be, only the prices seem to have remained constant.
In recent years, the grocery shopping experience has become a tad more interesting, due to the recession & price wars. We now have Lidl and Aldi.
The first time I shopped at a Lidl store, I was struck by the morbid silence and stark lighting. Then there were the unfamiliar brand names and bizarre array of hardware/clothing/electrical items. I walked around in a daze for ages before putting anything in my trolley. It reminded me of exploring the local supermarkets of holidays past but without the joy of the sunny weather outside. The other customers looked the same as I felt. Then when I reached the checkout, I was dismayed and slightly panic-stricken to find that I couldn’t use my credit card until I realised that my bill was so low that I had enough cash in my wallet to cover it!
A few visits later and I love shopping there! The products are fine, the prices are great, the hardware/clothing/electrical section is fascinating, the staff are friendly, the silence is welcome and the subdued lighting, well, it’s all we need.
It really is shopping as it should be.
Although in fairness they do tend to sell items that they really shouldn’t – I’m thinking about a rather unfortunate chainsaw incident and then tried to imagine the very moment that the purchaser of the aforementionned chainsaw stood under the subdued lighting in the complete and utter silence of a co.Kildare LIDL, contemplated the boxed chainsaw and thought ‘jayz – that’s EXACTLY what I’ve been looking for’ manoevered it into their trolley and then made their way towards the checkout! Now I wonder do items like this come with safety warnings like ‘microwaveable bikini waxing kits’ (do not overheat as you could cause permanent damage to your woo hoo), washing up liquid (do not drink – eh ok so) and more recently ‘L’Oréals revolutionary (yes another one) roll-on foundation’ – although technically speaking it’s not actually written on the packaging that one should ensure that they don’t roll the roll-on too vigourously in case one should ‘accidentally’ roll the goddamn thing straight into one’s eye – but it should!
Ah the chainsaw incident – well selling that just should be against the law! Your mention of L’Oreal reminds me of a line I heard recently on ‘Mock the week’ :