Supermarkets

Supermarkets are crap.

These huge aircraft carrier sized warehouses, with their “buy one get one free” and “rollback” offers, provide little to refute any claim that their only concern is the bottom line - above anything else - like customer satisfaction; paying fair prices; and avoiding monopolised markets.

Loyalty Cards

Just to make sure I buy everything from one place, you offer me a penny for every pound spent. That is not loyalty, that is a bribe.

Price Fixing

Due to their size, and enormous buying power, supermarkets can, and do, tell their suppliers how much they will pay for the goods.

Imagine this: apples are buy one get one free - great, you think - but what you don’t realise is that the supermarket has told the farmers producing the apples that, for the duration of the offer, they will pay half price. “Try shifting 2,000 tons of apples to anyone else… before they go off” is their attitude, and it works, effectively holding suppliers to ransom.

Shifting Shelves

Last time I came into this supermarket, the cereal was here, now this aisle is full of Shrek biscuits. You’ve moved everything!

Supermarkets move things around regularly so that you might “impulse buy” something when you nip in to get bread and milk. Another example of the disdain with which they regard their ‘loyal’ customer.

The 5 O’Clock Rush Hour

Not the supermarkets fault, but if you experience the frustration that is entering a supermarket at work chucking out time, you’ll know what I mean. The supermarket becomes heavily congested. It would be quicker to bake bread, than buy it at this time.

The same is true on Saturdays, and, in particular before a holiday which will see the supermarket closed for a day (like Christmas). People cannot seem to grasp that just having one day without shopping will not completely empty their house of food, and instead head to the supermarkets to empty the shelves as fast as they can… all at the same time. Don’t ever try to go into one on Christmas Eve - you’ll just go berserk.

They Aren’t Actually Any Cheaper

Honestly. Try this:

• go to a market for fruit and veg - it will be cheaper, better quality, fresher, and probably won’t be stuffed with preservatives;
• go to a proper butcher for meat - it will be tastier, won’t be wrapped in cellophane, you’ll be able to choose how much you want, and it will be cheaper;
• get your milk from a milkman - if there still are any -  it is far more convenient,  and they usually pay their suppliers a fair price.

(4 votes, average: 4.25 out of 5)

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