I'm Just Not Buying It!
A rant against the supermarket culture which is destroying small businesses and markets in particular and causing our town centres to be reduced to cafes, phone shops, charity shops and not much else.
Supermarkets.
Love them or hate them. Another one of life’s supposed conveniences which have
taken control of our shopping and slowly manoeuvred us to THEIR convenience.
My creed is
based on the healthy suspicion that certain supermarket chains want to take
over the world and will not stop until they have. Meanwhile they move into an
area and suck in all available trade with a callous disregard for the local
small and independent businesses which are rendered superfluous and irrelevant to
anyone distracted by the ability to do one stop shopping with free parking and
at strange hours, under the impression that better value and quality pertain
therein.
Eventually
when more people become disillusioned with the whole “sausage factory” approach
to retail, they will look once more to the local shops and markets and discover
that, horrors, many have simply vanished, unable to survive the loss of trade steadily
siphoned off by the giants. Specialist products and product knowledge and personal
service might, but often don’t, cost slightly more. They may necessitate a slightly
more laborious shopping regime and the cost of parking, but aren’t they worth
making just a little more effort to preserve the shopping traditions of the
nation, a sense of community, and the livelihoods of individuals and small businesses
who live, work, employ, and spend within those same communities they used to
rely on to support them?
The
supermarkets sell many things they are best suited for and many other things which
could just as well be obtained from a local small business or sole trader – to
the supermarket, the amount they would forgo is an infinitesimally small part
of their obscenely huge profits, but an essential part of the income to the
little guys. Can the small traders and businesses not be allowed even the
crumbs from Tesco’s table, or must they all be swept up and denied those who
can hardly be any threat to them?
So how do
they do it, suck us all into this euphoria of compulsive shopping, turn us from
customers into another commodity to be manipulated for profit, obliterate from
our consciousness that there is anywhere else to shop and erase our memories of
how we ever managed without them?
For a
start, everything is packaged as “for our good”, designed to make us believe
they know best, they give us what we want. All marketing works this way of
course. Customer service abounds it seems, we are told how much we matter to
them. But this is just not true and another cynical effort to brainwash. Can you
really get what you want when you
want?
Why is
there never anyone on the shop floor to help you these days –is it because of
24 hour and late night opening, when the shop floor is mysteriously and
immediately transformed at an appointed witching hour, into a hive of low-lit
activity and an assault course of trolley and cages and stock, and then only
then are there shop floor staff in evidence? This makes you think you should
not be there and either acts to make you quick and almost surreptitious, or it lulls
you into a slow hypnotic crawl in line with the relaxed and less official
atmosphere. Or it just makes you grumpier as you can’t find what you want, they
haven’t replenished it yet, and if they are open 24 hours a day then things
should be on the shelves 24 hours a day! What’s the point of going in the
middle of the night if they sell out during normal hours and don’t fill up til 3am?? Or you can’t get near for
trolleys and cages, and that’s before you get back to the check out to find
only one cashier working and are forced to consider the self service automated
till as the alternative to spending the rest of the night there waiting to be
served.
And WHERE is the basket, or 10 items or less, checkout???
This has
been superseded by the miracle of technology, the self service computerised
checkout which needs at least one permanent member of staff with lightning
reflexes and the patience of Job to deal with malfunctioning technology, the
inept, the inexperienced and the unwilling, not to mention the down-right
grumpy who just resent having to use it or else join a ten deep queue of folk
apparently each shopping for half the population of the Isle of Wight. And is
malfunctioning technology quicker? Not always.
Not for me.
I prefer personal service, and tell them so. I also prefer that they keep their
jobs, which further automation can only erode. Well done our local Morrisons,
my initial disgust at finding self service checkouts installed has been
considerably mollified by the discovery that basket checkouts have been
reintroduced alongside after all. Something for everyone then.
So, when
there is a refit and everything moves, just how aggravating is it, and how long
before you get used to where it all is now before it moves again? Ah, but this
is designed to get you to look much harder at everything, have your attention
drawn to all sorts of things you don’t necessarily normally notice. Hence you may
give up searching for the thing you really want before you have filled your
trolley with stuff that isn’t on your list!
Where are
the reduced items, the special offers? This is most important! Are the offers
clear, are the items available, what to do when it is buy one get one free and
there is only one left, is this the one on offer or just something similar to
fill shelves up with, why are there none left when I always buy them regardless
of offers and it’s not my fault they are on offer and much more popular than
usual and now I can’t get what I want because they didn’t order extra ……..and
that’s just NOT a special offer, it’s no cheaper than usual…….
Special
offers. A cynical ploy to make you think you got a bargain or induce bulk
buying to take advantage of offer pricing? A certain scepticism has to be
employed alongside the dogged determination to purchase only items providing
potential better value in this fashion and NOT to be distracted by the wider
ranges. For the price conscious it is all too easy to create an itinerary
taking in all major retailers to benefit from each of their price offers and thus
spend every penny saved on the means of getting to them. Certainly a critical
eye would on reflection reveal the unwelcome truth that not all is as good as
it seems, and not all of it is really in our interest however it is marketed to
appear so by manipulating our choices.
And how
much choice do you actually get to exercise? How many lines amongst all this variety
just disappear, “discontinued” – but did the manufacturer stop making them or
the supermarket stop stocking them, “not enough demand” – but how much demand
would there need to be when everything is supersized and bought in bulk, and if
supermarkets are all and the competition has gone – then where do you look for
niche products? It’s all in proportion; a supermarket is not going to order you
one specially or save one for you!
Furthermore,
the manufacturer has almost certainly ended up producing entirely, or almost
entirely, for the vast demands of
supermarket chains – if they stop wanting that product, it will perhaps cease to be made, and the
producer even go out of business, such is the buying power of these giants.
Small businesses are either excluded from this chain or would be unable to take
up the slack if a supermarket bailed out.
This is my
cynical view of supermarket “convenience” shopping which has infiltrated our
society and conditioned us to expect the questionable benefits of more and more
choice, extended hours, a constant price comparison for the best offers, in
effect we have been brainwashed into thinking this is how it should be done as
though none of us can remember the days of local shopping from dedicated
retailers and specialists. Our expectations are raised to a level which cannot
continue to rise, leading inevitably to disappointment when there is nothing
“better” or different left. Instant gratification. Is there such a thing as too
much choice?
If this
strikes a chord with the reader, if you are concerned at the impact on the
retail habits of the nation, the future of small retailers, and/or you
recognise the potentially dangerous seductive of the supermarket, then finally,
how to resist all this:
Shop where
you are and make no unnecessary trips which cost. Are you near a shop or market
at lunchtime, or do you pass on your way home? Any slightly higher prices will
be offset by making no special journeys. And you will buy much less if things
cost more, getting only what you need, especially if you have to carry it and
not just dump it in a trolley. Diversify and support specialist sellers where
possible thus helping to preserve the choices available.
Develop the
habit. It soon becomes normal.
Stay out of
supermarkets for a long period and then go back. Either you will faint with
relief at the end of deprivation and get retail fever, or you will recoil in
horror at the vast and unnecessary temptation cynically paraded for the
exploitation of the weak-willed and their tender budgets. This surfeit is not
because you need it but so they can make more profit by selling you more. Undoubtedly
one buys less when one does not go there. It is like a drug. I can remember the
urge to fill the basket or trolley. The sneaky comparison with another’s
trolley in the queue and the inherent contempt this can induce, look how much
or how little they have by comparison, fancy buying THAT. Or trolley envy – how
can they afford all that and I can’t, denied the most basic comfort of buying
food to satisfy every whim. The urge to indulge in retail therapy of the most
wasteful kind, buying too much food. The dissatisfaction resulting from the inability
to find something more/something different/ something better amongst all that
choice, that vague malaise and jaded palate of the satiated where nothing is
left to the imagination, encapsulated for many as the opportunity to eat
satsumas all year round rather than just at Christmas, which has effectively
stopped most of us wanting them at all if the truth be told.
It is in truth a habit. It can be acquired and it can be changed. I for one am happier spending less time in a supermarket, eating more simply and buying pretty much just what I need. Now when I look I don’t see the attractions the same way, there are things I want, things I would like, things I need, but I can see that overall there is too much, and the supermarket has returned from a delusory haven into a place to used for MY convenience, not theirs.