Fourteen machines lose the vote to one Sandra while the fish van remains unmoved
Friday. The big Sainsbury’s has moved everything again, the quarterly reshuffle, conducted overnight by persons unknown for reasons unshared, and this morning the entire neighbourhood could be observed wandering the aisles like survivors, trolleys drifting, faces upturned to the signage, each of us privately grieving the old map. The tinned tomatoes are where the cereal was. The cereal has gone to where the world foods were, and the world foods have been distributed, diaspora-style, across three locations. A man stood in front of the crisps, which are now facing the other way, and said quietly, to no one, well this is just silly, which is the strongest public language this postcode permits, the full nuclear option, and several of us nodded without looking at him, in solidarity, from our respective wreckages.
I understand the theory, one reads about it, the supermarkets rearrange so that we, lost, wander, and, wandering, buy. But they have not reckoned with the London shopper’s countermeasure, which is spite. I went in for six items and left with six items, navigating by dead reckoning and refusing on principle to see the new promotional bay, walking past the seasonal barbecue pyramid with my eyes front like a guardsman. Two pounds of my custom they may have, my curiosity, never. The Which consumer people publish whole investigations of supermarket psychology, and I commend them, but the true resistance is grassroots, it is Doris from the maisonettes drawing her own map of the new layout on the back of a receipt at the tills and photocopying it, reportedly, for the church coffee morning. Insurgency, in this country, is administered by parish newsletter.
The Self-Checkout Front
Then the tills, or what remains of them, two human tills now versus fourteen machines, and the machines and I have history. The machine and I performed our standard duet, in which I scan the bread, the machine announces unexpected item in bagging area, and I, a woman of sixty who has placed bread in bags across five decades without incident, am detained pending the arrival of the approval human, Kayleigh, nineteen, who waves her lanyard over my crimes with papal indifference and vanishes. The bagging area expects nothing, that is the tragedy of it, it is a scale with anxiety, and the anxiety has been distributed to us all. Meanwhile the queue for the two human tills stretched past the flowers, entirely by choice, pensioners and young mothers and one man in a suit, all electing to wait four times longer for Sandra, because Sandra says hello love and knows the veg codes from memory and asks after hips. Fourteen machines, and the people voted with their trolleys for one Sandra. The retail analysts may draw their own conclusions. Sandra could run the Bank of England. She has the manner and the arithmetic. I have said so to her face, and she said, no thank you love, the hours are worse, and rang through my loose onions from memory, 4082, without looking down, which settled the matter of national competence as far as this diary is concerned.
Outside, the community noticeboard has grown its August crop, a lost cat, sighted twice and clearly enjoying the attention, a man selling a sofa, buyer collects, firm on that after last time, and a poster for the residents’ association meeting regarding the bins, which promises to be, and I quote the poster, lively. The bins meeting is our Glastonbury. I have my seat. I will report.
The Fish Van Interlude
Friday is also the fish van at the corner, a tradition older than the supermarket and unmoved by it, Barry with his cod and his opinions, and the queue at the van is everything the aisles are not, slow, chatty, weather-based, self-organising. Barry’s van has no bagging area, expected or otherwise, only Barry, weighing plaice with one hand and settling a dispute about last week’s mackerel with the other, a full-service institution. I bought cod, was told about Barry’s daughter’s exam results, excellent, and his opinion of the new one-way system, printable only in part, and left richer in every respect. There is a whole economy of vans in this country, fish, veg, the man with the eggs, running parallel to the machines, on cash, memory, and gossip, and it has never once told me an unexpected item was anywhere. The van knows what I put in my bag. I put it there in front of Barry. Civilisation, since the Iron Age, has largely been this.
Filed the week with the satirical desk at The London Prat, and posted the account across the water to Bohiney Magazine, whose correspondent reports that American supermarkets are the size of aerodromes, that a man may buy a kayak and a birthday cake in the same transaction, and that their self-checkouts also cry unexpected item, in the same voice, which confirms my suspicion that there is only one machine, everywhere, and it is frightened of all of us equally.
Tally, six items in, six items out, spite intact, one map photocopied for the parish, Sandra’s queue joined and savoured, cod secured with intelligence briefing included. The tomatoes will move again by Advent. Doris will re-draw the map. The van will be at the corner, unmoved, weighing out the one arrangement they cannot reshuffle. Firm on that. After last time.
SOURCE: https://prat.uk