Off to the supermarkets this morning, to be confused yet again at how they try and cheat their customers...
I need to buy some spuds, as at this time of year, we have Jersey Royals, Cornish Smalls, Mallorcan News etc., plus a load of bakers, 'essentials', ordinary whites, reds etc.,, and they'll all be priced in different ways!
Some of the big ones will be priced as 'each', with no weight shown, some will be priced in ready-packaged bags by the kg, while other similar spuds will be charged in lbs. I even shot myself in the foot the other day, as I saw some Cornish News in a bag, but they weren't priced at all, so I 'zapped' the bag with the little gun, and got a label printed. Then I thought that the deal was OK, so got another bag, and did the same! I didn't see that the packaging was so similar, but I'd bought different bags, and after I got home realised that I could have got exactly what I wanted cheaper had I bought a loose lot...
I know all the habits of market trading back in the old days still control the 'ethics'* of supermarkets, i.e. sell as much as you can fiddle, and I even tried to take a hand-held Ipaq PC with me some years ago, so I could pop in the numbers, and calculate the price differentials, but it took ages, and I still thought I was being ripped off!
We're watching 'Open all hours' at the moment, and Arkwright is in full swing, so that's why I'm going to tremble when that little tin falls off the top of the crashing till, or rather more when the lovely Julia comes across to help me check out on the self-service till...
* There are no ethics in supermarket trading - Ed
4 comments:
I used to like the beginning of 'Open all hours' where Arkwright would be writing his special offers on the window. The mental torment he went though when knocking two pence off tinned beans, only to change his mind and make it a penny.
No ethics at all … true.
Yup, AK, it was a duty accompanied by the phrase, 'Ger, ger, ger, Granville, fetch a cloth'....
As I was told way back in the seventies, when my firm used to build supermarkets, the designers were always exasperated by the demands of the operators, and claimed them as 'animals', James!
The bloke running new development at Tesco back then was one of the hardest men to please ever, and he knew it...
I did manage a huge contract on several supermarkets when they needed our 'expertise' on imported roofing and cladding materials, as they wanted a cheaper building, but only my firm knew how to do it! That was a very lucrative time Chez Scrobs...
Post a Comment