adventures in the supermarket

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I don't know about where you live, but here in England we have a range of options when shopping for food items. Most of the larger supermarkets offer home delivery and 'Click & Collect' if you enjoy time away from the hustle and bustle of having to choose your own food. If your preference is to fight your way through the toddler tantrums, the trolley-bashers and the nattering fishwives blocking the aisle, then you can either 'Scan & Shop', use the self-service tills or even {heavens!} use an old-fashioned checkout girl {other sexes are available}. If we're shopping in Tesco we tend to opt for the 'Scan & Shop'. It does what it says on the tin; we scan our Clubcard, collect a handheld scanner and scan every item we buy. The items can go straight into bags and it foregoes the need to unpack the trolley and then get packed into the bags in the trolley. It also means we can keep an eye on how much we're spending. However, it is not without its frustrations and hitches when you finally finish and want to pay. If you have alcohol you have to wait for an employee to come and authorise that you are over eighteen. If you're buying something which is tagged, you have to wait for someone to come over and de-tag it. If you're selected for a random check, you have to wait for someone to come and scan ten or so items to check that you have scanned them all. If the technology goes a little skewy, you have to wait for someone to come and press a couple of buttons to rectify the silliness. You get the gist, yes? Unfortunately, both the 'Scan & Shop' and the self-service tills are hugely popular, and to ensure that they are well-manned, Tesco put a whopping ONE person on to oversee everything. One employee, who has to run around like a headless chicken sorting out customer issues, because 80% of customers will need her {it's usually a her, I'm not being sexist} to rectify something or other. To make matters worse, she has no way of knowing which of the four red lights came on first, so she does the closest. Inevitably this results in people like me being most horrid to her when she finally gets round to noticing my red light. And to an extent, I can forgive that. I mean, it's not her fault that Tesco is so tight. But on a Saturday they have one employee manning the S&S and one manning the self-service ... and what do they do? They stand and chat. I kid you not. They have a gas and a natter and don't pay attention and there may be four red lights flashing merrily away and a bunch of irate customers and they don't give a flying piggy. Seriously Tesco, you have gone very downhill. Very muchly downhill. Please sort it out. /rant over