7 Reasons

Tag: tesco

  • 7 Reasons Tesco Is Dangerous

    7 Reasons Tesco Is Dangerous

    1.  Trolleys. For the first time in 7 Reasons history, we have a three pronged reason. (Yes, that is the official name). One: Wobbly wheels – An absolute nightmare to control. One minute you are heading for Lady Grey tea bags the next you find yourself in frozen sausages. Two: Trolley rage – Why does everyone else push their trolley so slowly? And why do they always alter direction just as you are trying to squeeze past them? And why do they always leave their trolley right in front of the ginger nuts? You just want to slam someone through the cheese counter. Three: Not your trolley – You leave your trolley for a second to grab a box of Bran Flakes, then when you come back you put them in someone else’s trolley and walk off with it. And their baby.

    2.  Petrol. Petrol stations are dangerous at the best of times, but they are a just an accident waiting to happen when owned by Tesco. It is so easy to douse yourself in said liquid while imagining getting home and opening the freshly baked chocolate chip cookies you have just bought.

    3.  Hunger. Go to Tesco when you are hungry and before you know it you will end up with food you don’t need, a poor credit rating and dozens upon dozens of gym membership offers.

    4.  Acquaintances. Why is it you can’t go to Tesco without seeing someone you know? And why is it always someone you really don’t want to talk to? Or let look in your trolley? You have no choice but to creep around the store hiding behind boxes of Shreddies and buying enormous French loaves to cover your face.

    5.  Tills. You go to the same Tesco every week. You always see the same cashiers. You have absolutely no intention of talking to them when you are in the queue, but as soon as you are packing your bags you are talking to them as if you spent the previous night on the phone to each other. Why?

    6.  Stalkers. Tesco is a popular training ground for stalkers. They position themselves in the flower section, behind the lilies. Any victim who smiles at the lilies will automatically be smiling at the stalker. This is all the encouragement they need. Suddenly the stalker is off. Following their victim from fruit & veg to tinned tomatoes to their car. If you shop at Tesco make sure your list includes pepper spray.

    7.  Shelves. Because visual merchandising is more important to Tesco than health and safety, products are stacked in creative ways. Creativity has a habit of falling down and cracking you on the top of the head. So do tins of baked beans.

    *It would be unfair of me to take full credit for this piece as someone else thought of 5 ½ reasons.  But I will. I had to write it after all.

  • 7 Reasons to Shop at Sainsbury’s

    7 Reasons to Shop at Sainsbury’s

    1.  Nectar Points.  Sainsbury’s give you lots and lots of Nectar points.  They always remind you to hand over your Nectar card and, when Christmas comes, you can exchange your hundreds of thousands of points for a pound off your shopping.

    2.  Not Tesco.  Sainsbury’s isn’t Tesco so you can be fairly sure that your money won’t be contributing to an evil empire’s master-plan for world domination.  I once caught a glimpse through the doors of my local Tesco’s stock-room and it was full of stormtroopers.  Eventually a man called Garth, wearing a black mask and an aqualung, came and ushered me away.  As he escorted me down an aisle of tinned vegetables I asked him, “Which is best, your own-brand baked beans or Heinz?”   He pointed at a tin of Branston beans, which floated into my basket, and he said “The sauce is strong with this one”.  He was right.

    3.  Save.  In order to do their bit for the environment, Sainsbury’s give you a penny every time you use your own bag.  I’ve started using one bag per item.  That’s a penny off everything, which is much better than Nectar points.

    4.  Jamie Oliver.  He sounds like the love child of David Bellamy and Janet Street-Porter and looks like the love child of a frog and a toad.  He is also the public face of Sainsbury’s, earning millions of pounds a year representing them.  Don’t let that put you off shopping there though.  With that sort of money, he can afford not to have to do his own shopping so you’ve got no chance of bumping into him there.  Besides, he’s actually done some good things.  Never mind all that Fifteen stuff or the making children eat healthy food nonsense, he called BBC Radio 5Live’s Victoria Derbyshire a “stupid cow”.  And you thought he was an idiot.

    5.  Toilet light.  I’ve never used a toilet in a supermarket.  I don’t consume anything while I’m shopping and, as a man, I aim to spend the shortest possible amount of time at the shop, so I’ve only ever witnessed the toilet light from the outside.  It would appear that Sainsbury’s fit all of their supermarket toilets with bright ultraviolet toilet lights.  The dazzling brilliance of the blue-hued-glow which everything is bathed in whenever the toilet door is opened is astonishing.  A friend of mine went into the toilet while I waited for him outside and when he opened the door I had to use my hand to shield my eyes from the glare.  When he emerged it looked like one of the final scenes from Close Encounters of The Third Kind.  If you’re making a sci-fi movie on a budget then go to Sainsbury’s.

    6.  Grape Nuts.  Sainsbury’s is one of the few shops in the U.K. where you can buy this amazing American breakfast cereal.  It’s like malted gravel in milk.  Brilliant.

    7.  Comedy.  The automatic doors at my local branch of Sainsbury’s are fantastic.    They are the slowest automatic sliding doors in the world and are more entertaining than many spectator sports.  Between the shopper arriving at the door and the door opening, there is a four second gap.  This is fine if you’re expecting it, you know that you should stop and wait for a bit – I use the time to get my shopping list out.  Unsuspecting customers don’t stop though, because no one usually has to stop and wait for an automatic door, and they walk straight into them.  If you find watching people walk into doors funny – and I certainly do – then my local branch of Sainsbury’s is the one to shop at.  They even have a handily placed seating area next to the doors that you can spectate from.  You won’t find that at Asda.