A Trip to the Supermarket (Tesco’s) After Work! By Mr Alfred N.Muggins Part 3

Part 3

    Time was dragging as well. Alfred felt the loss of free time more keenly at the moment as he was in work which was very much full time at the moment, which meant the evening was short and he was rather tired by the challenging work of the day. But Mrs Muggins, his wife, and her son Karaoke Star enjoyed shopping for its own sake and in addition liked to meet up, and were therefore in no hurry at all to cut the shopping experience short! It was a chance for Karaoke Star to have his mum back for a short period, whereas Alfred found his wife’s loyalties soon reverted away from her husband back to her secondborn. Of course she was much in demand from all her erstwhile children, and now the additional grandchildren and daughter in law etc. Alfred just couldn’t compete, particularly when all he had to offer were moans and complaints about his new job, and the desire to get this shopping done quickly and to get home to where he could start to relax properly. He felt he was fast becoming the family worker ant who went out to work every day to earn the money to feed everyone, and pay for that settee he hadn’t wanted yet, and next year’s holiday, and the cat food and the dog food, and don’t forget the treats, and the energy bills towering above them all like a wave (in this sudden cost of living crisis brought on by the Tory government’s failure to look ahead and plan for their citizen’s future, when all the price rises would flow out of the citizen’s pockets and into the hands of rich investors in the energy companies), which hadn’t been paid for yet. But where was his own pleasure and contentment to come from?

     Stoically he determined to follow and to facilitate. Mrs Muggins turned around instinctively after the hunch of a bargain, and went back in the direction they had just come from. Karaoke sprang after her, chatting all the while. Alfred was forced into a U turn, which was most difficult to perform, but not wishing to lose ground and get too far behind, or lose them again, he forced the trolley to turn around, putting all his puny office working effort into it, and promptly ran over his own foot with the cumbersome trolley. Luckily it didn’t hurt too much, but the irritation caused to his sense of calm, was becoming costlier by the moment. His frustration levels were about to be exceeded. This must surely be the last straw, but even then it wasn’t, because Mrs Muggins and her son were nowhere to be seen again, completely oblivious to the conflict he was having with his own sense of worth.

   He decided to do something useful, and instead of chasing them around he would do the bread shopping, a most essential part of the family shopping as at the moment bread was much in demand by the current household occupants, and his wife never bought enough of the foodstuff if left to her own devices. Let them bring the foods or drinks they selected back to the trolley, instead of the trolley having to come to them, for a change! And so he spent a few minutes picking up a variety of loaves, mainly brown, but also a token white for, anyone who did not like their bread brown, all reasonably priced in this period of food price inflation, when we all needed to be careful not to waste the family budget. Alfred always looked at the bread prices, while allowing some spread of prices for quality and variation. Satisfied with his sensible choices, he placed them sensitively in the trolley where they would not be crushed.

    He saw, and heard, his wife coming back up his aisle with her son. Seeing that he had selected some bread, her sharp shopping inclinations soon clicked into play, and she glanced at the bread shelves, instantly settling upon what she thought were some brown bread relative bargains. Without so much as a thought for the minutes he had spent selecting them, and the thought that he had put in for relative variety of loaves, and sensible enough pricing, she thrust his chosen loaves back carelessly onto the wrong breadshelves, and made a quick selection of mainly one type of loaf, which he had already selected one of even though she had discarded that one too. He protested that he had already made a reasonable decision, and that he had already selected one of that type, and didn’t she prefer some sort of variety too. But it was all to no avail. She was completely convinced that she was in charge and would not even listen to him. His decisions had been just as good as the bread she had selected, and more varied!, but she wasn’t listening. Briefly he considered the possibility of divorce. That was what Henry VIII would have done! He had shown them all the way! But he knew he wouldn’t do that, it just wasn’t worth all the hassle!

     Pushing the unwieldy trolley he followed them soon towards the checkouts. There were long queues at the manned, and womanned, checkouts, naturally because most of the shoppers didn’t really want to do all the work of finding and scanning the barcodes themselves, and dealing with the machines that didn’t talk back, and any unforeseen problems. However there were plenty of stooges, mainly the younger and more vigorous ones, who were quite happy to scan everything themselves and supposedly get out of the shop quicker. It was noticeable that once labour rich shops like this were reducing the number of ‘live’ (or human!) checkouts available all the time these days, pushing the shopping sheep into the methods the chain Directors wished them to follow and thus releasing them from having to employ real live wage-earning people, and making more profit for the shareholders (and for the directors too effectively, in their exploding wages, pensions and share offers and bonuses!) Nonetheless the longer queues at the manned (and womanned!) checkouts spoke for itself about the preferences of a great many of the customers. There was even some new scheme for people who wished, or were willing to carry a scanner around the shop and scan their own goods in as they went around the shop. Presumably they paid for it altogether at the end. Thankfully Alfred had not yet had to put himself through the trials and experimentations of such a system yet. What if you changed your mind about some of the goods or saw a better offer, or merely realized you couldn’t afford it all at the end when the final figure became evident? At any rate he would not have to worry about all of those issues here.

     There was however a longish period of prevarication as Mrs Muggins protested about the size of the queues, and considered the options, and walked backwards and forwards toying with the different possibilities, and occasionally still stopping to consider whether she wanted to find any more bargains or desired purchases at the last minute. Finally after much unnecessary prevarication, and Alfred having to drive his unwieldy trolley backwards and forwards up and down the various checkouts, and his wife debating with her son as well. Alfred had to express his desire for her to hurry up and make a decision. So finally they joined a long queue, where the checkout was manned, by an actual real live man, who was thankfully relatively mature, and was actually talking and communicating with his customers, and happened to be quite efficient too. It was the best of all possible solutions thought Alfred, even though they did have to wait a little while in the queue first!

    It was determined that Karaoke star would pay for his goods first. Thankfully he wasn’t entertaining the idea that Alfred might pay for them, which remained a great relief despite the earlier assurance (because you never know, and Alfred (and his wife) had ended up paying for a number of things towards the end of the last family holiday (in Turkey!) when Karaoke Star and daughter in law (Mermaid!) had finally run out of money! However there was a moment or two of uncertainty when Karaoke almost seemed to think that Alfred himself was actually going to pull Karaoke’s heavy soft drink bottles etc out of the trolley for him, which he refused by omission. Karaoke was a lot younger than he, and most of Alfred’s drinks came out of a tap, or a kettle, which was much cheaper! And surely Karaoke would be able to lift his own bags of crisps!

    The only thing which remained was for the Mugginses to determine how they were going to pay for this rather large trolleyfull of groceries? Alfred asked his wife whose turn it was, or how she proposed they pay for this. Often one of them might pay and the other might transfer half of it back to the payer by mobile phone bank transfer.  But the word came back from Mistress Wife that it was his turn to pay, and she didn’t have enough in the bank anyway, so in addition to the trials he had had to endure in his afterwork period and the patience he had had to use up, he would also have to foot the whole bill as well (at least upon this occasion). He was however reminded that his wife had actually paid for his car to be fixed in the MOT, which they would be picking up once they had jettisoned Karaoke Star and his heavy drink bottles (which he was very grateful for of course!). Of course he would be paying his wife back fully for the MOT and repair.

    So Alfred paid for the shopping, and loaded it bagged back into the trolley, and then wheeled it back to the car and put all the goods into it, while his wife took it easy, chatting to her son. Then he took the wonky trolley back to the shop, and returned to the car, which he then drove to drop Karaoke Star off home, and then picked his own car up from outside the garage, handing Mrs Muggins her own car keys back. Much time had passed, and it was well into the evening by the time they got home. Eventually Mrs Muggins cooked him a meal, and he was finally able to relax, all thoughts of divorce banished, for a short evening, before it was time to get up for work the next morning!