I hate supermarkets for pretty much the same reasons I appreciate them. I detest the thought of driving five miles to the supermarket and spending an hour trudging up and down the aisles mentally calculating which size tin of beans offers best value for money. So I don’t; the wife does it.
That sounds bad, so let me explain. At best, supermarkets are frequented by people like me (no, not miserable bastards, although I’m sure they need to eat too). I mean that when I go to the supermarket (under duress) the trolley does not stop moving until I reach the tills to pay. It does not stop while I ponder endlessly over which brand of cereal I might desire a week on Tuesday and it doesn’t stop by the bloody beans either. I go into the supermarket and, because I use the same one, I can go at a decent walking pace down each aisle, knocking the required items off the shelf and into the trolley as I go. I don’t look at new products and I don’t buy anything different. That would require pause.
This actually raises another point. You know what puts paid to this time efficient shopping technique? When the supermarket manager thinks it’s hilarious to completely change the layout of the store for no reason whatsoever. Why do they do it? The bread’s been in the same place for two years but all of a sudden someone thinks it’d do better where the DVDs used to be, alongside the eggs which used to be near the tinned products. So, you end up lost. Shopping takes twice as long because you can’t find anything and when you get home you realise you didn’t actually get any cereal at all, because you don’t remember seeing any.
And it’s all bollocks anyway. Anyone who knows me will tell you that I verge on being a fussy eater. Well, not fussy exactly but I don’t like vegetables and I’m genuinely not that interested in eating. I probably wouldn’t do it except I’ll apparently collapse and die otherwise. So hopefully you can begin to see why supermarket shopping is such a chore to me. And that’s before I refer to the other type of people who shop there.
Now I’ve mentioned already that people irritate me in supermarkets. I guess I don’t notice the efficient shoppers because, well, they’re efficient and they’re not cocking around and getting in people’s way. I’m not being picky here, some shoppers will irritate even the most patient of people (which is not me, in case you were wondering). Let’s start with the morons who push their trolley into the middle of the aisle and then wander off somewhere. On any given trip you’ll experience at least half a dozen (seemingly) abandoned trolleys parked sideways so that nobody can get by. For a while I took them as targets and crashed into them with my trolley, sending them spinning into shelving. Anyway, this is not as satisfying as you might think if the trolley’s owner is not around to witness it. Half the time they’ve wandered off to a different section, oblivious to the fact that they’re inconsiderate twats. My new plan is two fold. First, move their trolley into the next aisle. That’ll make them think they’re going insane when they return. Next, remove some of the more important items and put them back on the shelves. It’s not stealing because they haven’t been paid for. Don’t remove so many that they’ll notice but imagine how annoyed they’ll be when they get home (after finally tracking down the trolley) to find they’ve got no bread or milk.
What next? Children. You’d think I hate kids and it’s not true. I love mine, I just hate everyone else’s. I’m not going to come up with anything original here. They scream, they make a noise and some of them are so completely unaware of their environment that you’d think they wanted to be run down by a trolley-wielding lunatic. Indulge them. It’s all part of the learning process. The upshot is that I don’t want to hear a snot-ridden brat screaming and wailing at its mother because she won’t buy it a king sized Mars bar.
Then you have the people who I like to refer to as ‘rolling roadblocks’. You get these everywhere, they’re not confined to supermarkets. It’s all about the stunning ability to make yourself as wide as an entire aisle (or pavement) and then walk with all the speed and urgently of an arthritic snail. Often they’re old and deaf which means “excuse me” (see? I can be polite) has no effect on them. You’re stuck, weaving left and right while weighing up the pros and cons of shoving them into the display of discount biscuits.
The final ones which bother me are the chatters. These are the people who seem to go to the supermarket with the sole purpose and regaling everyone they meet with their plans for the week. What makes these people bad is they, like those mentioned before, abandon their trolleys when they spot a friend. You are, therefore, left with two trolleys and a couple of bored husbands to navigate your way past before continuing your crusade for bulk lager.
What’s the solution? Once again it’s the internet, and you don’t have to purchase your groceries from a dodgy Croatian website either – you can buy it from exactly the same place as you would in person! This way’s much better because no-one can park a trolley in your way and the only thing that can go wrong is having Internet Explorer crash (and if that happens it should serve as a lesson in why you ought to use a decent browser). Even better than all this is the fact they’ll deliver it to your door, meaning fat people don’t have to expend precious calories going to get cream cakes. Sure, they’ll likely charge a delivery fee but you haven’t had to drive to the supermarket and my time is worth more than £5 for the hour it would have taken, so it’s all good.
So, my wife does the shopping online and I pay. Sounds fair? I’ve got to the point where I’m so disinterested in shopping that I can’t be bothered to look through what she’s ordered before handing over my credit card. She’s cottoned on to this. It’s only a matter of time before a bulk delivery of mail-order Eastern European male models arrives.
