After the disappointment of Monday’s dinner, I decided to prepare my own sandwiches for work today. At least I would only have myself to blame if they were horrible.
Luckily they weren’t. Though the only problem with sarnies, is that you sit at your work desk all morning eagerly anticipating dinnertime, then the lot seem to get devoured in a matter of seconds. At least with the Scotch Broth, one has to wait for the soup to cool down, thus allowing a more lengthier appreciation of dinner. After wolfing the sarnies, I simply didn’t feel sated, and was promptly heading over to Tesco Metro for a packet of Snack-A-Jacks. In case you are unfamiliar with Snack-a-Jacks, they are little circles of puffed rice that look like polystyrene and are only ever purchased as a desperate effort to stave off hunger in a manner which avoids the calorific guilt associated with real crisps.
They sold three different varieties; salt & vinegar, barbeque and caramel. I am not too keen on the latter as I consider Snack-a-jacks to be a savoury product so the thought of caramel flavor always seems a bit weird. Yet there also seemed a sensible logic to getting one of each flavor; if only as a means to swiftly resolve the dilemma of whether I preferred an extra bag of salt and vinegar or an extra bag of barbeque. I didn’t really have the time to stand around having a debate with myself over such trivialities.
Grabbing one of each, I headed to those self-service check-outs where you scan the product in yourself. Where possible, I will always try to use these, because it means I can avoid any awkward social interactions with check-out staff who probably hate me; because they associate any customer with the drudgery of being at work. I never really feel inclined to impose myself upon someone who disliked me by such virtue of my default consumer relationship. Which may seem paranoid, but even if they don’t happen to hate me, it’s still not a very appealing aspiration where the best to hope for is that someone merely feels numbing ambivalence. Consequently, the only time I tend to use the staffed check-out is when I am buying any alcoholic products. This is because I once tried scan a four pack on the manual checkouts, and a big light above the checkout suddenly started flashing a piercing red. The purpose of this blazing beacon was to attract the attention of one of the shop assistants, to verify whether I am old enough for booze. This is undeniably a necessary and understandable policy to employ, but I still felt it a little indiscreet. It’s not so bad if you shop in the evening, but what would the rest of the shoppers think about the sort of person buys alcohol in the daytime? Once again, maybe I’m paranoid, but I never much fancy a public accusation of a steady problem with alcoholism.
I scanned the Snack-a-Jacks through and was already holding my pound coin out in the anticipation of payment. However, I was alarmed to see that when the screen tallied up my bill, the machine seemed to have made a mistake. No offer deduction had gone through, and it expected the full 44p payment for each of the bags! I am not a very confrontational character, so my default reaction was to just put the extra money in and leave it be. It didn’t seem worth the hassle just for 31p.
But then why should I? The only reason I’d bought three bags was to get take advantage of the offer! When I had entered Tesco’s, I didn’t even intend to buy three bags! This wasn’t just about puffy rice circles anymore – there was a bigger principal at stake. If I were to let this lie, it would be the 2nd time in a fortnight I’d been ripped off by rogue offers from evil corporations! When I look back over a previous entry I wrote about PC World, I can’t help notice how badly it reads. You kind of get the sense that I so angry whilst reporting the incident, I was actually hammering at the keys. And my God, didn’t it go on and on?! I was not willing to let this happen again. For the first time ever, it was me calling a shop assistant to the checkout machines, rather than the checkout machine calling shop assistants to me.
Upon her arrival, the woman looked at the screen and then studied the Snack-A-Jacks. She turned to me, saying “Ah yes you see, the offer only includes the 30 gram bags, but this one here is actually a 35 gram bag.”
Incidentally, the rogue 35 gram bag she was referring to was the Caramel flavor - trust the caramel ones to causing all this sodding trouble.
“That’s why the offer didn’t work y’see. Different bag sizes.” she continued, before kindly enquiring, “Would you like me to change them for you?”
“Yes please” I replied, resigning myself to the bosom of her maternal charm.
I really didn’t want to inconvenience this nice lady with this petty matter any further. But equally I didn’t want to effectively pay 30-odd pence for an extra 5 grams. That would be consumer madness. I mean, 5 grams is at most, 2 puffy rice circles. And in any case, they were 5 grams of caramel flavored puffy rice circles- my least favourite flavor!
'Ooh I feel like such a pedant squabbling over the 31p.’ I self-consciously announced whilst following her back to the isle of Snack-A-Jacks. It was true; the amount of money was so insignificant that I probably wouldn’t even go to the effort of zipping the reclaimed shrapnel safely back my wallet. It would just end up swinging loose in my trouser pocket, till each piece of change finally fell out unspent.
"Oh don’t worry love. It's a good job you pointed it out now. Otherwise other people would have just complained later."
I strongly suspect she was only trying to make me feel better. Even if anyone did ever go to the effort of pointing out the misleading display, I’d imagine she’d much prefer it if it happened when it wasn’t on a shift she was working.
Nevertheless, I don’t mind admitting that I feel slightly proud for standing up to Tesco and their confusing Snack-A-Jack arrangement. The puffy rice may soon be devoured, but I can forever cherish the receipt. It will be a permanent souvenir of the day I finally became equipped to look after myself better in the frenzied jungle of retail. It’s a massive personal achievement for me. I suppose you might call it Retail Therapy.
No comments:
Post a Comment