I’m a Tesco Home Delivery kinda guy (sorry Ed!) I love my little phone app and that at any time, anywhere, I can just add an item to my shopping basket. Sat on the loo and notice the toilet rolls are getting low? Click and they’re in your virtual basket. I was so in control of my provisions before lockdown.
However, you know that moment when you are sat on the Thomas Crapper and you suddenly realise that you are out of toilet paper and you have to do that silly little shuffle walk with your trousers around your ankles to get some more? Well, in my chaotic state and with my stocks running low I had to shuffle all the way to Tesco Express on Broomfield Road the other day…..
Delivery dates are now like gold dust on my app and I am often forced to brave a trip to Tesco Express. It’s not for the faint hearted is it? After you have queued outside for 15 mins you are invited in by a security guard clad in PPE and you are immediately stopped in your tracks by someone standing half a meter inside the doors squeezing the oranges. Now do you hold your breath and squeeze past swiftly or wait patiently? If you take the view that actually you want to get in and get out with your shopping as quickly as possible then you are cursed for being impatient and irresponsible by a shopper who suddenly morphs into the Harry Enfield character Kevin the teenager.
If you do manage to get around the half a dozen or so aisles, whilst taking evasive action every time another shopper enters your aisle, you are faced with the dreaded glass fronted checkout! (No, I will not use the scan your own checkout, me and it do not talk the same language!) So, the thing about the glass fronted checkout is that it’s not designed for the checkout girl (or boy!) to pack your bag and to pass it back to you. You have this ridiculous tug of war with the check out girl (or boy!) trying to retrieve your bag of shopping beneath the screen because the only gap is taken up by your laden basket.
And then when you leave the store weighted down with 4 bags of shopping you pass the little hygiene trolly with assorted wipes and sanitiser sprays. Now, be honest, who can pass a sanitiser spray these days without having a little squirt? You cannot help yourself can you? So you stop again, getting someone else’s trolly up you backside as you bend down to place your shopping on the ground, and you have a little cleanse to make yourself pure again.
Who would have believed that popping into the corner shop could be so stressful?