OK, so I know its summer, and yes, there are lots of tourists here. I also know that tomorrow is a religious holiday on the southern coast of Spain. Despite this, I still say that supermarket staff must really learn to behave.
There I was with my little basket on wheels, minding my own business and just trying to get a few things I needed. Please note, I didn’t even have one of those full-size trolleys, so I had a particularly small supermarket footprint and I’m not exactly a huge person myself.Anyway, there I was, reaching for the brown sugar, when what do I hear from behind me but, “Perdóneme señora,” (basically excuse me, or pardon me, lady), in a rather strained and sarcastic young female voice.
I turn and there she is, a young supermarket employee sitting astride one of those fancy (and large) ride-on floor polishers. She wants the old bag to get out of her way so she can continue cleaning the floor. This, mind you, at peak shopping hour, with hundreds of customers milling around the store. What happened to “the customer’s always right” and stepping back to let your client do their thing?
OK, so, muttering to myself, I grab the sugar and head around the corner to the coffee aisle. Just as I reach for my good and tasty Colombian, guess who appears? Yeah, her again. It seems she went around the other way and came in from the other side. She glared at me. I glared back, grabbed my coffee, and stomped off. I’m really going to need that caffeine after all this.
She then seemed to follow me wherever I went in the supermarket, basically interfering with my heaven-sent “right to shop” (I feel a protest coming on!). OK, admittedly, it might possibly be because, while still in front of the sugar, I muttered in the Queen’s English, “Who pays your bloody salary anyhow?” which she, just maybe, understood?
But it wasn’t just her. There were others. I think I mentioned that this was a peak shopping hour in the supermarket, loads of customers, etc? Well, other members of staff apparently thought this was the ideal time to replenish stock on the shelves in virtually every aisle.
So besides trolleys, baskets, people, tourists trying to work out what the Spanish for “washing detergent” or “milk” or whatever was, we have added to the chaos loads of boxes and crates of produce. Great fun. I heard one guy exclaim that we needed traffic lights to control the flow, and he wasn’t far wrong!
To my tortured imagination, this was a scene from one of those post-apocalyptic movies, where everyone is rushing to grab the last of the food, or maybe a scene from The Walking Dead, with the staff members playing the role of walkers. Whatever, I had quite honestly had enough.
Anyhow, I finally had everything on the list of essentials and headed for the exit. There were three tills open. I headed for the one with the shortest queue. Yeah, I know, due to Murphy’s Law, the shortest isn’t necessarily the quickest, but I chanced it anyhow.
Just as I was within a couple of feet of the cash register, this massively-piled trolley, filled with enough food to feed a small pueblo, pushes in front of me. Driven, mind you, by … you guessed it … a member of the supermarket staff.
It seems some bright spark had made a plan and ordered online. While they relaxed in comfort with a glass of wine, or in the pool, someone else rushed around the supermarket for them, putting everything through the till and then delivering it to their door.
Now there’s a plan. Next time I will cough up the delivery fee with pleasure and let someone else do the work for me. No strain, no pain, and everything to gain!
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