It’s been nearly 6 months since we stopped shopping in Tesco.
As someone who quite literally grew up shopping in Tesco, it did take something reasonably drastic to get us to stop. Sure, we’d used al the other before on occasion, but we always found ourselves back in Tesco. After the May bank holiday weekend, that all changed. I went in on Friday to do the week’s shopping at about 9.30pm. It used to be quite common (and convenient) for us to shop late at night, taking advantage of the 24hr opening. Unfortunately, this was just after our local Tesco had just installed self-service checkouts, and the store manager had taken the ludicrous decision that after 10pm, only the self-service checkouts would be open.
If you’ve used self-service, you’ll realise that while a basketful of shopping is manageable, a trolley load is not. You’ll also no doubt have silently sworn about some imbecile in front of you who probably has trouble working their front door, let alone a checkout. Now imagine the same person with a week’s worth of shopping, on their own.
Now imagine 20 of them, queuing for just four checkouts. Four checkouts that were supervised by a single employee. Checkouts that required you to ‘please wait for assistance’ for inexplicable items such as a bag of frozen sweetcorn.
It took half an hour just to get to the front of the queue. While she was assisting me with my frozen sweetcorn, I told the clearly suffering and employee to tell her manager that I thought this was the stupidest idea he had ever had. I doubt she had the guts to do so, but the look in her eyes told me she agreed.
Our local Tesco is actually not especially local; it’s a 15-minute drive across town. Our local Morrison’s, on the other hand, is less than mile away. We’ve been shopping there ever since, and have no intention of switching back. Here’s just a few reasons why:
- The bakery is nicer.
- The bakery actually has bread left all the way up to closing time.
- All the fresh produce is better quality. Significantly better.
- Morrison’s is lit like a store, not an operating theatre. It’s surprising how much more relaxing doing the shopping is when you’re not being glared upon by 4,000,000 lumens of clinical fluorescent lighting. The soft lighting in the wine section makes Morrison’s feel a lot more civilised, and less like a buying cheap plonk in a budget booze warehouse.
- Morrison’s trust their staff. If a Tesco employee makes a mistake at the till, such as scanning an item twice, you’ll have to wait for a supervisor to come and correct it. That’s not usually a short wait. In Morrison’s, the checkout staff can correct it themselves.
- So far I have not had a single trolley with a mind of it’s own or a wheel that broadcasts your route to the entire store with a resounding CLUNKCLUNKCLUNKCLUNKCLUNK.
- There are no irritating LCD screens dotted around the store playing inane advertising over and over and over AND OVER.
This is all the more surprising given that, by any account, our Morrison’s is in a dodgy part of town. I’m sure Tesco would tell me how 67.8% of items in my basket are cheaper at Tesco, but I don’t care. I haven’t noticed the difference in my wallet. I have noticed the difference in that I no longer need a day’s mental planning to steel myself to go shopping. So, Tesco, thank you for finally being rubbish enough that I went elsewhere. I won’t be back.
