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If You Ask Me... Supermarkets

Wednesday, 25 May 2022 08:00

By Flo Whitaker

Flo Whitaker writes an open letter to a fellow supermarket shopper

Dear Princess Me-Me, As I stood behind you in the Customer Service queue, feeling I was about to spontaneously combust, I tried my best not to make casual assumptions about your personality, lifestyle and warped sense of self-entitlement. Honestly, I really tried. “Oh, just let it go. Perhaps she’s  unwell, broken-hearted, or simply having a bad day,” whispered the (I’ll admit) tiny, shrivelled part of my brain that deals with forgiveness and not-holding-grudges.

Should you happen to be reading this casual character assassination, the Sussex Living lawyers can still breathe easy, safe in the knowledge that you’ll never sue them – because you’ll never recognise yourself. No chance of that, as your sense of self-awareness packed a suitcase and departed many years ago; probably around the time you demanded a new pony as you were bored with the colour of the old one.

As to the cause of your distress; yes, I agree, we can all recognise that sinking feeling when faced with a space on the supermarket shelf, decorated with an ‘Out of Stock’ sticker, but yelling at someone who happened to have the misfortune of staffing the Customer Service desk at the moment you discovered your favourite type of hummus was unavailable, isn’t justified. Ever. Oh, and for clarification purposes, the situation wasn’t, as you kept annoyingly drawling, “A nightmare.”

To help you identify real nightmare situations, here are some current examples; (a) Sheltering under a tarpaulin in a dysentery infested refugee camp, (b) Watching your daughter being forcibly married to a Taliban fighter – and knowing there’s nothing you can do about it, (c) Living anywhere in the Ukraine.

Everyone in the above situations have probably run out of hummus too, but you don’t hear them complaining about it, so, pur-leeeze grow up – and go away.

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