Tesco suicide

There's a Sneaker Pimps song called Tesko suicide on their album Becoming X (which is still one of my favourites after many years). I'm not one for delving deep into the meaning of song lyrics; I just tend to enjoy the music and the way the words fit into it, but during a trip to the Tesco store in Dereham, Norfolk on Monday, "Tesco suicide" seemed a relatively painless option for getting me out of there.

The UK had a bank holiday on Monday because New Years Day had fallen on the Sunday. This meant that Monday was the first day the supermarkets had been open since Saturday evening. A whole day of not being able to stock up on provisions and the people of Dereham and its environs had gone into panic - entire families of Norfolk folk were out in force.

Now, I've not had much contact with real Norfolk people, but if those present in that store on Monday are representative cross-section, I don't think I'll bother much in future. I was actually quite scared. There I was, minding my own business, when a 6 foot woman and her two unruly kids literally ran at me with a trolley. What the fuck?, I thought as I picked myself up and dusted myself off.

Blimey, they were a bit odd. Turning the corner to find Cath - we'd become separated - I bumped into a huge man who was wearing sunglasses. Eeeek! My heart raced, I listened intently for the excited squeals of Beanie, but she'd become occupied with chewing a label.

On finding my companion, I calmed down a touch. There was another family where the two children were dressed in dressing up clothes (like ballerinas, or fairy princesses). The children were following their parents down the aisles: pirouetting, bowing, leaping along.

Why do people have to make shopping trips an entire family outing? Can't one parent stay at home with the frenzied offspring while the other does some shopping? Nobheads.

And to add to the agony was the layout of the store itself: no space for queueing because the aisles were within 2 metres of the tills. To cap it all, none of the tills had conveyor belts. So there I was, trying to pack up and none of the shopping items were reaching me. The checkout girl had to remember to push stuff down to me. I had to reach forward and overstretch my back to get to stuff. And you couldn't stand alongside the till to do the packing because there wasn't enough room between the two tills.

I was incandescent with rage. I almost stopped packing to get her to call for a manager, but I didn't want to make a scene in front of the baby - she'll no doubt suffer enough embarrassment at the hands of her parents. I so wanted to say "Stop! I'm not doing any more packing until you get a manager here to explain why these tills have no conveyor belts. How am I suppose to pack my shopping? I want it delivered to me one or two items at a time in a nice steady flow, not be sent piles of stuff sporadically!"

So, Tesco, I am very disappointed that I AGAIN have to have a whinge about one of your stores. What the fuck were they thinking ofwhen they designed the layout of that fucking place? And no conveyor belts on your tills? Are you fucking mad? The patrons of that store looked like they had enough difficulty getting dressed! You don't expect them to be able to multitask by both reaching forward AND picking stuff up simultaneously, do you?

The catalogue of evidence against Tesco being my favourite supermarket is building. Let's review it:

1. Not making sure that lazy bastard customers return their trolleys at the Prestwich store; the lazy twats just leave trolleys in parking spaces instead.
2. Not selling items that I like all year round.
   
3. Only selling chilled drinks from the Coca Cola company and providing shit customer service when challenged about this.
4. Hiding the pickles.
5. Not limiting the number of care in the community shoppers to two at a time.
6. Crap store layouts.
7. No conveyor belts????? Nobheads.
8. Tesco Express

Tesco Express
Deserves its own whinge and this has been done most eloquently and very recently by Funny Thing. These stores crop up in town centres, often where there's a high student population, and they're also associated with Esso petrol stations.

The first thing you notice is the markup in prices compared to the standard stores. And then there's the queuing: if you time it wrong, you can be in a queue of about 30 people waiting to get served.

But the absolute worst thing about these stupid stores is when they're part of a petrol station. The forecourt is given over to parking, rather than petrol, so there are only 2 pumps. But the parking spaces are too close to the pumps so it's difficult to manoeuvre in either case. You go into the store to pay for your petrol, but although it's a Tesco, they don't give out Clubcard (loyalty) points on petrol sales.

Fuck that, their petrol's shit anyway and it's cheaper at the Shell near work.