Today is Friday, a joyous event that I would have been celebrating later with a generous gin-and-not-so-much-tonic if I hadn’t donated a pint of my blood today, but at least the nice tea lady was there this afternoon with an offering of chocolate orange ‘Club’ biscuits, that were so nice I would have given up a whole other arm’s worth of my red stuff for an extra one of those bad boys…!
Anyway, besides the excitement of a ‘Club’ biscuit and the fact I don’t have to go to work tomorrow, Friday is special for another reason….
It’s food shopping night!
Now you might, as did Neil and I, think that the weekly food shop in an overcrowded and blindingly lit pre fabricated building surrounded by a sea of badly parked cars sprawling across two spaces to avoid wrecklessly abandoned trolleys is the last thing you’d wish to do with your Friday evening, and a month or so ago I’d be tempted to agree.
Now however a revolution has occurred in our food shopping experience, something so brilliant a herd of stampeding rhinoceroses couldn’t keep us from Sainsbury’s door, so ingenous it must have been invented by a woman, so exciting absolutely all of the cool kids are doing it…
We’ve signed ourselves up to a beepy thing.
A beepy thing for those of you who have not yet been introduced to this extrodinary device, is a hand held barcode scanner which is used to ‘beep’ the things as you put them in your trolley, and what I can only imagine is that a magic supermarket fairy then flies above you as you walk around the store adding everything up, because on exiting the shop, all you have to do is hand over your ‘Nectar Card’ (a customer reward card for those of you who reside outside of Britain) and it knows exactly what you bought and how much it all cost and then all you have to do is pay! None of this having to load things onto a checkout conveyor belt and then bag it all up in record time because the bored early-twenty-something serving you wants to get home to play ‘gangster snooker VII’ or similar on their X-Box, or having to stand and wait in an enormous queue for the mum of 4 to recover their child whose adventures have got them stuck in the basket rack, and you don’t even have to suffer the painful looks of disapproval from the sensible elderly couple in the queue behind you as the juvenile shop assistant waves the 4 bottles of vodka (for a party of course…) you have purchased at their manager.
It’s great!
What is more you actually get a go at doing the beeping! Now as truly rewarding and fulfilling a life it must be to work on a checkout – and is something I truly believe should be given a higher profile in career libraries – it has never been a job that I have ever felt impassioned to do, although if I am honest, it has always been a secret ambition of mine to have a go at making things ‘beep’ (much in the way I aspire to spend some quality time in a post office just so that I could stamp things). Now I have been given this opportunity (to beep – sadly not stamp) and I don’t even have to wear a startingly bright orange fleece and ankle swinging navy blue polycotton mix trousers to partake in the privilege!
Really – what more is there to life!
So as I look forward with great anticipation for the clock to turn its little hand to 5 and the big hand to 12 so I can peg it down to my local prefabricated building with no parking spaces and ‘Rod Stewart Pan Pipe Classics’ offending my ear, I will leave with you knowledge of the beepy thing and the joy it can bring.
Plus if you scan the barcode on the shelf with the beepy thing opposed to the actual item, it makes a wicked noise like a game of space raiders!
Bring it on!
I hate shopping so much that on several occasions, I have abandoned helen so I can sit in the car and calm down. Helen then gives me a call when she is at the check out so i can help pack – but what I do really reaaly love is the self service check-out (capt. Jon can attest to this) – its just fun to pretend to be a check out girl! We are getting our shopping delievered tonight having done it online – also a treat well worth the fiver. Why can’t supermarkets make shopping more interesting?