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.