Tuesday 23 August 2022

Shops and Service


As the kettle was making far too much noise these days I decided it was heading for the door.  So, in spite my  body's great reluctance, I wandered slowly around the corner to Tesco once again.
As you know this means grabbing a basket, quicker than fighting people with trolleys, selecting goods, and heading for the checkout where we pay, exchange a few words, and move on.  Simple, usually satisfying, in spite of price rises, rude customers who are mostly older men, and children who are either to be enjoyed or eaten, depending on their behaviour.
The other day a facebook picture was presented of a shop during wartime.  A customer or two, with children, were being served by the women behind the counter.  In the background a man selected items from a shelf above.
"How wonderful!" a woman exclaimed. "Such service, you don't get that today."
This got me going on the absurdity of such women.  Clearly she has been brought up in a supermarket world.  This lass has never had to trudge from the butcher to the baker, the grocer, that shop down the lane, across the bridge to the clothes shop, and if she is lucky, spent much time trying on hats in a department store.  All the time lugging the bags with you, none of them plastic, and dragging bored and uninterested kids also.  All this is the heat of summer, the rain and cold of winter.  Add to the joy of such 'service' there is the long queue at each shop, in wartime the ration coupon also had to be administered, and then the chatting women gossiping all day long and saying nothing but holding everybody up while the man behind the counter flirted with them to increase his take home pay.  In short, the 'service,' some loved held everyone up, and when supermarkets arrived women rushed to them as all their needs were met in one fell swoop.  Who caused the end of such shops?  The women fed up of trudging between shops, hindered by queues, and wet through from rain, now made it home quicker and happier than before.
Shops still have service, the Tesco girls are very good, and the smaller shops which remain can offer service, or not depending on which miserable employee is on duty.   Those who long for days gone by probably never lived through them.  I remember as a kid being taken round the corner to what must have been one of Edinburgh's first supermarkets, a small one run by the St Cuthbert's Co-op.  We moved there inn 1953, and the first was a Sainsburys one in London in 1950 so this was a quick spread of the idea.  I also stood bored while mum was rabbiting with women about nothing in the street, my mum would talk to anyone, or in shops, whatever they were.  As for waiting while she tried on hats!  This was avoided by standing with dad on the pavements edge in Princes Street while she wasted time in C&A's or whoever.  A long line of men were to be seen at the pavements edge, smoking and waiting while the woman was indoors doing her thing.
When a man goes shopping, as you know, it is a quick business deal, soon accomplished and home again...

Edward William Cooke - Sunset on the Lagoon of Venice

6 comments:

  1. How right you are about the shopping..I remember being trailed from shop to shop, nowhere to dump he bags, a bus journey at the end of the marathon...no wonder the supermarkets were welcomed!
    And here my bags are packed for me and a young man takes them tot he car....

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  2. Fly, Send that young man over here. I have a job for him...

    Kay, Nice, bought as the old one was too loud. This is just as loud!

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  3. It was a treat for me going shopping with my grandma in london. Mostly our family shopped at the NAAFI in various foreign postings. That wasn't an experience to be savoured even for a kid.

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  4. Worse still is the amount of self-service checkouts at supermarkets. I refuse to use them, I want to be served as a human by a human!

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  5. Jenny, Ah the NAAFI, much missed by some. Clearly not you. It would be a change using shops, but you would not do it today.


    Mike, I had to call the man 3 times last night at Sainsburys while using one. He was overworked at nearly all the self serve tills.

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