Just like post-communist Russia

I don't understand supermarkets.  Well I do, obviously:

1. Park up as close as possible to the entrance
2. Pick up a trolley - one of the midi ones because bending down to put stuff in the big ones is a touch too much for your ageing back
3. Wander around the store, picking up items from your shopping list, tutting occasionally at shoppers who abandon their trolleys in the middle of the aisle with not quite enough of a gap to squeeze yours through without touching theirs*.

• Grapefruit - check
• Milk - check
• Mozzarella - check
• Warburton's thickest loaf - che... Ooh, look, it's on offer.  I'll get two and freeze one.
• Mustard seeds - check
• Turmeric - check
  
• Ground cumin - che...  Hang on, no cumin?  At all? 

So you go to the "ethnic" aisle and prepare to buy a 4kg bag of the stuff - none there either.  What the fuck?  So you are then compelled to return to the normal spice aisle and do this:

Honestly, what were they thinking when they designed this packaging?  But it's nice to know that shoppers can have this fun in Tesco, Sainsbury and Waitrose.  They don't do herbs and spices in Asda because they only sell bottled "He-he, this'll make you shit" and "Fucking poof coconut girlie shite" curry sauces that are ready made for the exquisite tastes of their own particular brand of shopper.

The great thing about the world foods section is that you can get what you want for a lot cheaper than from the standard produce aisles.  For example, red kidney beans in salted water for 30p a can instead of shitty red kidney beans in salt-free water for 50p a can.  I got three cans of really nice coconut milk for 50p a can tonight when the normal crappy stuff is about £1 a can from the next aisle.

I'm sure this amounts to discrimination against white, British people who are a bit wary of venturing into those sections of the store where the packaging comes in foreign languages.  


*What is it about other shoppers' trolleys that makes them off bounds in terms of moving them out of the way, or ramming them into the backs of their legs when they dump them right in front of the shelf you want to get to?  There's an unwritten law that says you simply cannot touch another person's trolley with any part of your anatomy, you have to gently squeeze past it or give it a gently nudge with your own trolley.  Just think about it next time you're in Tesco.  You'll find yourself doing it.

Anyway (:@), you finally fill your trolley with stuff that you didn't need and none of the things you did want and take it to the till where you don't have to interact with the checkout assistant any more.  They just fling things at you after scanning them and you face the task of bagging things up before your entire load of shopping piles up around your ears.  The transaction is completed by the shopper too, sometimes prompted by a nod and a "put your card into the reader", you take your own receipt and trundle out of the store... slowly.... as you're always caught behind somebody in their 60s taking their 90 year old mum for her weekly shop.

Of course we have self checkouts these days. If you don't have the privilege of having your shopping scanned and thrown at you by somebody else, surely you should get a discount?

The "unexpected item in bagging area" is usually a bag.

There will be an uprising.  Not of layabout, so-called "students", or agitator union-types (I will attend to these imbeciles in due course).  No, the normal, every day MOP (member of public) will decide one day that they've had enough and they will demand service.  Come on Tesco, Sainsbury's, Morrisons, Waitrose, the lot of you.  Get some real people on the tills and make the experience of your customers not quite so soul-destroying.

Every little helps.