Never go shopping.
 

I have a theory that all supermarkets have a ladies lounge.
When your wife says "I'll meet you at the bread counter", they scurry
off to the lounge where they drink a few cups of coffee whilst
following your increasingly irritable efforts to find them, on a closed
circuit system. When they judge you are close to tears, they then
re-emerge and give you a good ticking off for not having waited at the
bread counter for 40 minutes. I have threatened to have it announced
on the Tannoy "Will Mrs. Farmer please go to the customer desk, where
her little boy is waiting for her. We have given him a pint of
Guinness and he is not crying now".

Best place to go shopping with Mrs McC (Mark 1) was in Ipanema, Rio.

Mrs McC asked that I go to dress shop to help her choose between two dresses. She came out of the changing room in dress No. 1 and I made the correct noises so she went back to try on dress No. 2.

Just then, the very attractive young female assistants came round with a tray of cold beer bottles!

I of course took one only for Mrs McC to emerge and see we necking the beer. To say she was cross would be a massive understatement! She thought I had gone out and bought the beer and it took some time for her to realise that all the males were drinking and that it had come from the shop.

It was good marketing - everyone was happy, girls could take their time and we ended up taking both dresses!

FJ, I must say I had not thought of the Ladies Lounge in Waitrose, or wherever. Like many when the current Mrs Selman and I go supermarket shopping we often split up to save time and agree to meet at some designated spot in xx minutes time. This never happens basically because I shop much quicker than she does and I arrive whilst she is still browsing over the merits of which piece of ...... (fill in as required) to buy. This last rule applies to everything in life which I do very much faster than my wife and after 45 years of marriage I have still not totally got used to it. Wandering round our chosen supermarket of Waitrose in Hythe, Kent, finding her is not too hard because it is not that big but on occasion we shop elsewhere and if you are in one of the whoppers it can be a lengthy and annoying process. The accepted method of walking down the middle aisle and looking sideways down the cross aisles almost never works because the despatcher has always just sent her round the far end where she cannot be seen. We supermarket shop on line a lot but if doing a shop in person as often as not I shop on my own as I do not mind the actual shopping but the queueing to pay and the unpacking annoy me. Quite a long answer on what, in theory, is a simple subject! :(

Obviously not here they don't. Otherwise one would not find them blocking the lanes in child, mother, grandma rafts each accreting any of grandma's coven that happens to be passing. Each raft attracts another with the result being only path for trolley down the middle with no access to shelves on either side.

Humbug. Bah humbug!

I thought that only happened in this part of the world - wee Scottish wifies solving the world's problems, and causing traffic jams and consternation amongst right-minded people.
Guess it's a universal trait.
Humbugs of the season to you also sir.:jump:

I never go shopping with MrsJJ anymore. She does some shopping in supermarkets but usually on line now. I do have to take her, as she doesn't drive but I always wait in the car. She really doesn't want me with her as it used to cost a fortune, me picking up goodies on the way round. Also, never go food shopping before lunch - the sight of all that food!!!........


JJ.

Invariably shopping with her indoors led to her disappearing when I was told to select something off a top shelf and took my eyes off of her for a moment. Women, I discovered over many years, have this ability to simply vanish into the ether when it suits them to do so. So then I find myself wandering along those endless aisles with a bottle of coconut oil in my hand looking for the beloved one who has gone AWOL. At last she is located after a search that would have more quickly located the Scott expedition , and as always her first question is "Where on earth have you been?"

"Looking for you, you parrot!":bye:

I can't say I like supermarkets but I have a plan.

Go in, collect goods via shortest possible route (which the scheming shop managers try to disrupt every now and again by shuffling everything about,) go to checkout, preferably the quick release 10 items only one where I give the EVIL EYE to anybody who is even one molecule over the 10 items limit and then escape like Steve McQueen in the famous prisoner of war movie.

(Although a Triumph flying over Morrison's car park would probably not sit well with PC Penhale. .... and it was a Triumph, disguised as a BMW maybe, but for that sort of behaviour you need a real bike. :supercool:)

A typical trip to a supermarket in France. You get to the entrance just behind a French couple and find them blocking the way, in conversation with some friends. Them, ignoring your 'scuse moi', you manage to squeeze past and start shopping. About half way through your shop, you find them in front of you again and at exactly the shelves you need to get to, talking to an other couple and won't move. Ok you miss that for later. Further on 'dammit, they are there again', blocking the whole isle chatting to others. One again you have to re-route but go back to get the stuff you missed, but thankfully you are not now behind them. All ok now and you complete your shopping and head for the checkouts. As usual out of 12 there are only 3 open so go for the shortest queue. Unfortunately, every one of the 6 in front of you, which includes Mr & Mrs 'Chicane', knows Nicole, and chats at length to her. 30 minutes later you get to the till, and packing a months supplies your self, you eventually get through - sigh of relief. Until you find getting out of the carpark, you are behind the Chicanes' 1985 Renault crawling along at snails pace. Eventually, you get to the exit and then the Renault shoots off like a scalded cat, probably to tailgate some innocent driver on their way!!


JJ.

I thought I had discovered the perfect remedy for the f*ckwits who dawdle down the isles and stand staring into vacant space right at the very shelf I need to get to. I obtained a canister powered air horn which I secreted up a long overcoat. Upon coming across one of the said individuals I let loose a mighty toot which I have to say did have the desired effect. :eek:

Sadly my solution didn't last long as various complaints were made to the customer services staff and which resulted in my being escorted from the premises by security personnel :(

I must confess the security guards did have a large grin on their faces and admitted that was the most fun they had enjoyed in quite some time. :chuckle:

P.S. my wife now refuses to go shopping with me and prefers I wait in the car until she returns so all things considered a win win for me after all. :thumb:

I wonder if, like continuous changing of locations of the produce, that these granny rafts are perhaps good for their trade. Slowing the competent shopper so we are more tempted to make unplanned selections. Otherwise would they not as a very minimum provide each trolley with a bicycle bell. Usually tell off trolloygators who do not follow the rules of the road with a curt "red to red passing only, please!"

JollyJack......Oh how true.....seen it happen so many many times.

geoff

That's a good idea, DV - I could see a bell working in the UK and, at Christmas time, all that jingling would add to the occasion! Not viable in France though!


I remember getting a fine years ago, for not having a working 'warning instrument' on my M/Cycle - in fact, most things didn't work on it! Being an ignorant 16yo, with not much electrical knowledge, I bought a bulb type hooter - problem solved.


John.

Supermarket shopping is, I have found, relatively simply but it requires a degree of preparation. So the first job is to create a list of the things that one needs, preferably in the order from start to checkout that the local supermarket normally applies in their aisles. This list is normally left at home on the kitchen worktop along with the "green" shopping basket that eliminates the need for plastic carrier bags. That is not too much of a problem though, because I can recall everything on my list except for those products that I had not added to it, and most supermarkets provide cardboard boxes at checkouts for customers to load and carry away their purchases.

These cardboard boxes are those in which the produce was first delivered and their disposal costs the supermarket, so it makes sense to offer them to the customers FoC instead of charging them thirty cents for a plastic bag because the customer will then have to pay a waste collection company one-hundred and fifty a year for all of those boxes. I avoid such things as having forgotten to bring a reusable bag or accepting a cardboard box at checkout, by my simply wheeling the whole trolley full to my car and dumping all of the produce that I didn't go out to shop for initially onto the back seat. I derive a certain satisfaction from that in that I demonstrate my commitment to the environment.

This has the attendant advantage that when my wife says "Oh, I meant to ask you to pick up some *** I can usually find some under the back seat of my car having forgotten all about it since the last trip last Wednesday. This, I insist, is parapsychology so, In a suitably superior tone, I can advise her that "I knew we would want that this week!" :supercool:

I totally agree with everything said here already. I saw a survey recently which showed a supermarket layout somewhere and the route followed by male shoppers. Superimposed on this was the route of female shoppers. The women were all over the place whereas men were in and out. (Bit like sex really).

Supermarket companies spend lots of money analysing the traffic patterns of shoppers so that they position the goods they want to sell in the most advantageous locations, usually at around elbow height. They know the products we have to buy, so put them in places out of the way so we have to search them out. Alongside these, or near them in the same aisles, are items we think we might like to buy, but weren't intending to when we entered the shop. They also vary the piped music to speed up traffic flow if the shop is full, or slow it down if the shop is half empty, so that we also subconsciously slow down to spend more time browsing. They position the instore bakery at the back, so that we get drawn through the store by the aroma of fresh bread.

Don't even ask about those loyalty cards and how they let them know what we buy.

Ahhhh ... right ... that's where I've been going wrong .... :eek: :smoking::sweat:

I don't like to 'shop'. I do not mind entering a retail establishment, heading directly for the item(s) I require, collecting same and proceeding directly to the cash register, (Do not pass Go, do not collect $200, etc).
'Shopping' has a broader meaning, it implies traversing from the entrance to the closest display stand, circumnavigating it then repeating the exercise for each aisle until reaching the other end of the building, all the while picking up items which were on no list, have no immediate usefulness as food or anything else, and which serve merely to inflate the subsequent bill.

My first wife was of similar mind to myself, having been at sea with me, and fully comprehending that one cannot call up the ship-chandler, when the cargo-nets of supplies are already on the deck, to say I forgot the cornflakes (or whatever) can you please send some out.

My current wife, who is Jamaican (no slur intended on Jamaicans, perhaps all shore-bound ladies are of similar disposition) follows the 'shopping' method, even if she only went for, say, milk.

To get around this problem, I bought her a car for her birthday, so now she can go and spend all day browsing, and at least I can check the cheque-book usage online!

If Ipanema was good, the Malaysian experience is a bit like the rural French experience but worse!

I have never known people who dawdle around shopping centres the way they do in KL. Large family groups including grandparents and kids in pushchairs, people strolling around eating and, worst of all, just stopping in a group when they get of an escalator so everyone else builds up behind them and cannot get off!

Add to that the groups of Korean or Chinese tourists being led en masse by a guide with a flag on a stick and you get an unforgettable shopping experience!

I have to say though that Mrs McC (Mark 2) knows how to keep me on side. She goes out with friends, sees and chooses what she wants and then McC is simply collected from the bar, taken to the appropriate shop and all I need to do is pay for the goods! Simple really.

McC

Your shopping experience sounds exactly like Kings Lynn......:sweat:

It even sounds a bit like Bude .... :eek:

It sounds more like Ikea.......I do like their products and have used many over the years, mainly as built in stuff to save making from scratch. But....never go in the school holidays, weekends, or first thing as they queue-up. Late in the PM when the women are picking up their kids from wherever, is the best time. Lunch time the noise in the café is astonishing with screaming sprogs!


JJ.

Went shopping today and was not a happy shopper. Finding a parking spot is a test of your emdurance and patience. Ho bloody Ho tiss the Christmas season! Spending is like an obsession to some and their credit card bills in a few weeks time will have the owner of the card in dispair. Why do we inflict this on ourselves every year. I have five gandchildren and their wish list is something I have to get a translation for as all these electronic gizmos I have no idea what they are for!

Give them each a doll or a toy soldier and pretend that you thought that was what they wanted.

That's a top tip from me. Thank me later.

Where children are concerned, my first instincts are to extrapolate from Farmer John's suggestion and give china dolls and lead toy soldiers.
If this has the desired long-term results then it will not be a recurring problem.

I am currently faced with finding something suitable for a 12-year-old boy who spends every waking hour watching football or supposedly 'funny' clips on a cell-phone and a 21-year-old girl who actually looks 13 who I am (slowly) teaching to cook. They come from a Jamaican mountain village where there is no running water (actually I shouldn't comment on that as we don't have running water at this house either), electricity during alternate weeks and cell coverage is sporadic at best.

I have observed two distinct reactions to going into a shop with them: first they look in awe and don't say anything because it seems to be a dream; then they want to buy everything in the shop in case it isn't there on another day.