Observations on behaviour in a supermarket

What could be simpler than going to your local supermarket, wandering round and choosing your requirements from a list written out in the peace and quiet of your own home? Choices made, proceed to the checkout with the smallest queue and putting your purchases into a suitable bag or your car, wend your way homewards in the knowledge of a simple job well done!

If this is what you believe then I can only say you’ve never done the shopping yourself.

The average shopper will go to the trolley park and select a trolley with a wobbly wheel. The parking area is full of these trolleys, none of which is easy to push in a straight line and will stop neither knocking nor screeching when moved.

The next move for our shopper is to find the narrowest aisle in the store, wobble, knock and screech their way there, accidentally bumping into as many other shoppers as they can. Then they’ll move the trolley until it is at right angles to a shelf, bend over the length of the trolley and push their bottoms against the shelf opposite. Congratulations! They have now managed to block a complete passageway between the shelves and still can’t reach the goods they want.

This could be a problem but the solution is easy. Stand up, grab the trolley handle and swing the beast end for end across the aisle. With a bit of practice they can do this without letting any one else past. Now they can browse the shelves, letting the trolley swing at random behind them whilst searching for a particular item.

Then they abandon the trolley completely and walk along the shelf searching for their shopping. Relieved customers will be sure to try and move the trolley out of the way at last. But it is a well known fact that once abandoned, any trolley develops a mind of its own and will freewheel to a position of maximum obstruction against the goods on a shelf.

Our shopper now blunders back, arms full of the shopping that he’s found. The trolley is not where it was left and in the ensuing panic he runs up and down the aisle dropping packets at random whilst looking for his lost transport. Other shoppers will try and help him pick the stuff up and now a complete area of let’s say, the frozen meals section, is jammed solid.

Naturally there are occasions when they will meet another shopper of like mind and with not too much difficulty the chaos can spread across to another department.

One of the favourite places to maximise disruption is at the fruit displays. Every one wants a flimsy plastic bag to hold each kind of fruit chosen. These are available from a rack carefully designed by a sadist. It is almost impossible to get just one bag from these diabolical contraptions. To get the one bag wanted, three or four others are thrown carelessly onto the displayed fruit. Other people have handled these bags so they are disregarded by all and sundry as they attempt to get a single bag from the dispenser.

As a result each customer has abandoned his own trolley so that they can use both hands to sort out just one bag and quite often free running trolleys make the fruit section look like the M25 in the rush hour.

Next comes the careful examination of what began life as fresh produce. Each piece is examined closely, squeezed just in case its too hard or too soft, and finally discarded, often in the incorrect box for that variety.

By the evening time there won’t be an unbruised piece of fruit in the shop.

One last phenomenon of the fruit section is that there is never the correct number of bananas in a bunch. Consequently the banana boxes are littered with single fruit that no one wants.

The other main problem at the supermarket is the checkout. Management in their wisdom have designed these for fast service to speed the happy shopper on their way.

Everything goes well until three items bought on a three for the price of two basis go through the till.

“Wait a moment there’s supposed to be a reduction in the price of those items.”

The checkout assistant protests that the machine says not. A delay ensues while a manager is found and the situation explained, before he trots off to check the shelf label. A long queue of frustrated shoppers builds up, many repacking their baskets or trolleys to go to another till where thy might save a couple of minutes in their busy lives.

The manager returns, explaining that the label refers to the goods displayed on the shelf below, or maybe the one above and the discount doesn’t apply in this case. Since the goods were only picked up because they were thought to be on a discount, the till has to be unlocked by an authorised person and the charge deleted from the customers bill.

Then our happy shopper realises that he’s forgotten an item on his shopping list and would everyone mind waiting a moment while he goes back to fetch it. Finally all the shopping is correct and as he pays with his plastic card the checkout assistant utters the fateful words, “Any cash back sir?”

The answer doesn’t really matter as the shopper can’t find a card that works properly in any case. If he does then its ten to one that he can’t remember his pin number.

One other annoyance that comes to mind is the young couple who are pushing a huge trolley loaded well above the gunwales with hundreds of packets. They then barge into the ‘baskets only’ queue and unload the trolley into a selection of baskets to make themselves look legitimate. Fortunately for them this is Britain and no one complains.

Of course this is just a description of a normal shopping day. It gets a lot worse on the occasions when the management have moved all the goods from their usual places and nobody knows where anything is!