I didn’t think I’d have anything to blog about today aside from my recurrent dreams of nuclear war, which I don’t want to bother you with because we don’t need any more doom and gloom, do we now? Anyway, as I said, no blogging material on the horizon until I thought, ‘I’ll just make a quick trip to Aldi before I settle to my Day of Writing and Book Learning.’
Ha!
Got around the shop quickly - not too much to trolley up, just the weekly basics. Appalled that the cost of butter has risen by almost 30p a packet, but I suppose that’s no bad thing given Britain is apparently in the grip of an obesity crisis. Made me think, are the prices being pushed up by some form of subtle government plan so that people cut back on food and, what do you know - they lose weight?! Realise I am sitting dangerously close to the rabbit hole of conspiracy theories by thinking these thoughts and am relieved to discover leeks are down by 4p.
Arrive at checkouts, one of two in operation. Choose my checkout, unload shopping. Now, ask me why I have two of these…
I’ll tell you why. There was only one in my trolley on arrival at the checkout. The one on the right. I don’t use bubble bath but Andy does, but not always, just sometimes. A bottle will last three or four months, so we shall be all right until Christmas with two bottles, and we have two bottles because the woman behind me in the checkout queue was SO aggressive with her unloading, so determined to SHOVE her shopping as close to mine as she could, that HER bottle of bubble bath (the one on the left) fell over the little ‘Next Customer’ separator sign and landed in with my shopping.
And because I was feeling testy with her pushy checkout ways, I couldn’t be bothered to say, ‘Excuse me, I think this is yours’ and hand it back with a smile and in the apologetic style us Brits have even though something isn’t our fault. So when she gets her pushy self home and fancies to calm herself down with a dollop of stress relief bubble bath, she won’t be able to! Oh, the irony. Ha!
(When I relayed this story to Andy, whilst brandishing a bottle of bubble bath in each hand, he accused me of being ALWAYS angry with people who shop in Aldi, a statement of unfair severity, I think. I am very calm when shopping in Aldi provided people behave in a reasonable manner. And sometimes they don’t. And that makes me testy. Which I think is a wholly reasonable reaction.)
Back to Aldi. I’m in the queue. Not much is happening on the quick checkout front. A staff member is at the front of the queue and has a small basket of stuff. She is doing one of those price check exercises they have to perform at supermarkets every now and again for purposes beyond me. Behind her is a man with an unhealthy amount of bacon in his trolley, and then me, and then Pushy Lost Her Bubble Bath Woman.
There seems to be a problem with the till. The two staff members are jiggling a key around in the till, and pressing buttons in an increasingly frustrated manner. See, not just me who gets testy in Aldi. From what I can gather, they have been locked out of the till following the input of a code for the basket of test goods. The man in front of me has unloaded his bacon heavy shop onto the conveyor belt, I’ve unloaded my shopping (two bottles of bubble bath), and push ‘n’ shove woman has created a tidal wave of products behind me. In my mind I am daring the staff members to tell us to unload and go to the other checkout.
Tensions continue to rise at the till. A third member of staff whizzes by and shouts, ‘You need to keep your key on 1! Stop putting it to zero. It won’t work if you keep turning it back to zero!’
‘We’ve done that!’ shouts Test Basket Staff. ‘It’s stopped working altogether.’
This causes staff member number 3 to return. ‘No!’ she shouts. ‘You THINK you’re keeping the key on 1 but you’re not! You start off at 1 and then turn it back to zero. IT WON’T WORK ON ZERO!’
It’s all fascinating stuff.
And she stands over them as they follow her instructions and lo! She is right and the till springs to life. I thought at one point she was going to smack some fingers but clearly Aldi have a no physical contact clause in their training manual.
The basket of test goods is dealt with, and then it’s Bacon Man’s turn. Goodness, he is in a rush. He is in so much of a rush he flings his box of one dozen large eggs onto the floor. Thankfully, only one is broken. But then the checkout girl says, ‘Oh, go and get yourself a replacement box.’
And inside I am yelling, ‘NO! He dropped them, there’s only ONE broken, he should just suck it up (not literally, that would be grim - raw egg eaten from Aldi’s shop floor) and not waste even MORE of MY time by wandering off to fetch another box!’
Outwardly, I practise calm breathing and wonder what sort of cake to make for Andy’s birthday using increasingly expensive butter.
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