Mrs L and I tended to use Sainsbury’s for a our weekly shop. The nearby store is one of the bigger ones, so plenty of choice and only a mile up the road. Since her death, I’ve carried on. I know where to find what I want and there is easy parking. But things changed recently.
The hysteria over Covid-19 caused a change. In the immediate aftermath of the lock-down, I went to do my weekly shop only to be confronted with an absurd queue running along the car park.
Unlike most Britons, I detest queuing. And I am certainly not going to wait in a queue in the car park to get my weekly shopping for no other reason than the population has gone stupid, cowed by a constant splurge of hysterical propaganda and Sainsbury’s is going along with the absurdity. I simply will not play along and I will not enable it.
So I drove around the district to see what was happening in other stores and it was pretty much universal. I tried a different tactic. I got up early the following morning and went down to Sainsbury’s and was able to walk straight in.
So, that seemed to be the formula and for the next six weeks or so, it worked.
They did introduce an absolutely insane one-way system for the meat aisle. But only the meat aisle. Now, given that all of the aisles are plenty wide enough for people to pass easily there was no need to halve the width and force everyone through what now became a bottle neck. But, again, given the time of day, I was able to traverse it with minimal inconvenience. I am pretty efficient in that I can get the whole weekly shop done in about twenty minutes. I like to be out of the house and back again in under an hour and I usually manage it easily.
Things changed last week. The day after the bank holiday, the queues were back. I tried the following day but earlier and it was still the same. So I did as I did before. The CO-OP was clear. No queues. So they got my business last week.
I tried Sainsbury’s again and at just before eight this morning there was a queue. The CO-OP was pretty much empty. So I shopped there again today.
I don’t know what has changed at Sainsbury’s but I’ll be damned if I play their game. They are not “keeping me safe” they are on a power trip as they go along with ridiculous government guidelines that merely inconvenience people and do absolutely nothing to reduce what is already an extremely low risk. This is what social distancing has become – social control and putting security guards on your door to control how many people come in is nothing more than control freakery. There is no need and I won’t play.
The CO-OP has a one way system as well, but I quickly learned that the mask-free customers were ignoring it, which is probably just as well, or we would still be there going round in ever decreasing circles following the signs that go nowhere. And if you realise that you have forgotten something, there is no official way back to the aisle you want. No one seems to be enforcing it either, so I get the feeling that they are paying lip service to the whole bollocks with the stickers and the screens on the tills. They have done the minimum and largely everyone is carrying on as before.
Sainsbury’s in the meantime have lost a customer. I can get most of what I want from the CO-OP even though the choice is more limited, resulting in a slightly higher bill and I can top up with perishables from the local shop. I will manage as I am adaptable and I am adjusting to the change. I don’t suppose Sainsbury’s will notice as there are plenty of willing, pliant people who will go along with this idiocy. I won’t. I refuse.
The Co-op’s Stilton is as good as any I have had in recent years.
There’s often a queue at our local Sainsbury’s, I’ve tried various times of the day but it’s a bit random and if it’s longer than 2 or people I go elsewhere. More annoyingly the shop always seems virtually empty when you actually get in there.
Tesco is the worst supermarket I’ve visited (and i now refuse to go to), the staff take great pleasure in standing on the end of aisles ordering you about and herding your around the store like cattle. No thanks.
I’m almost looking forward to seeing what the high street will be like once other retail stores open in a few weeks and people are queuing 50 deep outside Primark.
Yes indeed, the smaller local shops have been far more sensible and customer focussed on this. They have won my business, and likely to keep it too.
In defence of the large supermarkets, they are in the media eye and few, so easy to lean upon with the hysteria. I suspect they haven’t done much of the nonsense willingly. The smaller shops are many, and less subject to heavy enforcement.
The whole lockdown thing is close to vanishing up its own contradictions.
You can visit someone’s garden for a barbie, but you MUST NOT SIT on their garden chairs. Sitting on their lavatory seat is perfectly OK however.
Cue General Melchett: “Maaaaddddd!???”
Already the Great British Publick is ignoring them and applying (mostly) common sense. I expect a few more months of increasingly irrelevant wittering from the MSM & Politicos, until they realise no one is listening.
Then we can start rebuilding an economy on the rubble.
Asda isn’t too bad. I like to go first thing and it always seems to busy then. When I went around eleven it was really quiet. I live in a village with no shops so, when it comes to convenience stores, I have a choice of two nearby villages. One (Costcutter) limits the number of shoppers they let in at once and often has a queue, the other one (spar) doesn’t.
So, Spar it is then…
The wifey unit has a rule, she refuses completely to queue to give someone the hard earned, i endorse, any more than one person waiting to go in that’s a no shop.
Morrisons have been fairly reasonable and so long as there’s no queue outside i still pop in on the way home from work no one way systems apart from the till queue (fair enough), one day there was a big queue outside but you can see Lidl’s from M’s raised car park and no one waiting so Lidl’s got the shop instead, a free for all once inside with most shoppers acting like real normal people still.
I’ll never put another penny in Sainsbury’s tills as long as I live. I’ve shopped there my entire adult life and used to have an online delivery every month or so. Then with the advent of the Apocalypse they made it impossible to even try to look for a delivery slot unless you were on some pre-screened database of ‘vulnerable’. Quite how this worked or came into being was not explained. Some might find their concern heartwarming, but I have a friend who is on the government’s official ‘stay at home’ list and it took him 3 weeks to secure a delivery slot a further 3 weeks hence. I can only assume that a lucky few were getting thrice-daily deliveries. The incessant self-congratulatory emails from the Top Banana – sometimes daily – boasting about how marvellously they were doing didn’t dispose me to think highly of them, either. So it’s no surprise to hear how their stores are being run.
Boots is another nest of wannabe tyrants. Officious and slow at the best of times, our local branch allows only one customer in at a time.
Sainsbury contacted the pregnant partner to let us know we’re on ‘the list’ and can books slots. NHS told them, without consulting us. I thought, ‘That’s how easy it is to be put on a list.’
We’ve been booking a slot a fortnight but the local Lidl is basically back to normal now so we’ll be going there again.
I tend to shop at Lidl an hour before they close (9PM they close at 10PM), there are usually more staff than customers and restocking throughout the day.
I couldn’t get flour though and resorted to Morrisons. Forced to do the car park queueing bullshit for about 15 minutes to find the store fairly empty. Pointless, dogmatic idiocy.
Maybe the supermarkets think they should show willing given the danegeld the government is shelling out. Dunno really.
I’m a carer but apparently we don’t count as don’t have NHS badges, over the last 8 weeks I’ve worked an average of 66 hours a week so not a lot of time for queuing. Morrisons are great early evening but lidl, aldi and local co-op have never had queuing. Their staff are safe from us germ ridden public and we can wizz round and get what we need before or just after work. Just don’t tell our bosses as even entering a supermarket is a crime and we can bring in viruses to our residents!!!
Your bosses occupy a classification of idiot all of their own.
Lidl is good never a queue, pretty normal inside.
I’ve found Aldi to be the best around here. Some minor queing to start with but now can pretty much walk in at any time of day and nobody seems to give a stuff about the whole 2m thing, including the staff.
That also have fully stocked shelves and the quality / price is unbeatable.
I have found the local Lidl and Aldi to be fine as well as the small local Co-op which I use for the bits in between major shops.
It’s worth Googling your local branches of shops as some have live updates of how busy they are. If it’s the kind of shop which opens late I’ve usually found the last hour of the day to be the quietest.
Let’s see who will be the first of the big chains to break ranks now it’s started raining, queueing won’t be so much fun getting wet.
Surprised that you could get into Sainsbury’s early, I
thought all the biggies reserved the first hour for NHS and some the second hour for elderly and disabled.
I do a bit of shopping for an elderly neighbour who has a penchant for Cloudy Lemonade which is only stocked locally by one largish Co Op so queued a couple of times before finding that Tango from my lovely queueless PO Convenience store was acceptable.
Same. Haven’t been to M&S (constant queues) Sainsbury (long queues + police cars circling to check queuers are behaving, creepy, no thanks) for several weeks now. So it’s Co Op and Waitrose (no queues at either) for us. Quiite amusing to see MPs moaning about voting queues round Westminster. Welcome to our world, Twats! Twice I’ve been invited to queue at local little tesco by a hatchet-faced martinet. Twice I’ve turned round and walked off.
I dunno I just resent queueing to spend my after-tax cash. Same with petrol stations and cashpoints – I refuse to queue for either. It’s humiliating.