When we moved to sunny Oxfordshire I made the mistake of dropping into my local Sainsbury's (Kidlington) on the way home from dropping hubby at the museum. As this not a planned stop I did not have my hoard of eco bags with me (I have a whole cupboard of the things including my cool bags - I mean the ones that keep food cool not just the ones that look cool (such as my Fortnum's bag, Eden Project etc) As it was the biggest supermarket I'd seen since I left the joys of Leicester (if you've been to Kidlington you will know it's not that big but compared to the 3m Tescos in Bicester it's big (about a 1/3 the size of the Sainsbury's in Leicester and a similar size to my Mum's Waitrose in Surrey, mind you, the Asda in Milton Keynes takes 3 hours to do properly as it's the biggest supermarket in the south east of england - it's bigger than IKEA next door).... as I was saying, as it was the biggest supermarket I'd seen in some months I grabbed a trolley and went for that joyous sunday stroll up and down every single aisle. Needless to say I found things that I didn't even know I needed and strolled up to the till in order to pay. I carefully placed my items on the till in the perscribed order that I was taught as a trained Sainsbury's bag packer (ok I trained when I was 18 but it's stayed with me) and as I reached the till realised that there was no bags on show.
I said to the girl on the counter 'any chance of some bags for packing' and it was then that I realised that I had moved to a whole new world when you live in Oxfordshire. Here was the girl on the checkout - not your normal girl on the checkout, but an Oxford University student paying their way through uni by slumming it in Sainsburys as she looked down her nose at me and said; 'Why haven't you got recyclable bags to save the environment'. It was as I started to defend my unplanned shopping that I thought .. S*d that. What's it to you? I stopped my self short from apologising (apparantly according to DH it's because I'm British and from Surry that I have to apologise to everyone ... don't even mention when I got pulled by the German police for having my motorway fogs on when I was driving in fog on a suburban road ... I started the entire conversation as I got out the car with the words ...'I'm sorry, I'm English' ... I don't know if they thought I meant that I was sorry and my excuse was being english or I was sorry that I was english. (Don't mention the war ... I did but I think I got away with it)) I just said to her, 'Is it a problem that I need to have bags?' She hurumphed and begrudingly gave me 2. Each time I asked for more she gave me one more bag. As this was slowing down the whole packing thing (and I'm good at packing and can do it as fast as the guy in Lidl throws the food at me and that's fast) the line behind me were starting to mutter. I turned to them and said; 'I didn't bring any bags with me so I'm only allowed one at a time to fill and it's taking me longer ... anyone have a problem with that?' The muttering continued so I turned back to the girl and said 'apparantly they think you should let me have more than one bag at a time!' She almost threw the next 4 at me. Strange but I haven't seen her since. L Kind Regards Liz Baker [email protected] My chronicle of my bobbins can be found at my website: http://thelacebee.weebly.com/ ________________________________ From: Joy Beeson <[email protected]> To: Chat <[email protected]> Sent: Tuesday, 31 January 2012, 15:29 Subject: [lace-chat] Re: Green thing Counting Walmart, there are five supermarkets in town, but only three that I can get to without making a big hairy deal out of it. Aldi expects you to bring your own bags (bags, including insulated bags, available at reasonable cost) *and* expects you to do your own packing. I like their system best, partly because I have to rush-rush to put my stuff on the conveyor as fast as the clerk takes it off, and partly because I never find the canned goods in the same bag with the bagged salad. And when I go by bike, I don't have to take the stuff out of bags before I pack it into the panniers. Marsh and Kroger will throw stuff into the cart loose if you insist on it in just the right way. I think the baggers at Kroger are paid by the bag; they stop just short of putting empty bags into my bags. Marsh gives a five-cent credit for each bag brought and used, and fewer of the baggers are snowed by canvas bags. I bought the canvas bags from SuperValu (now Nichol's Market) in another state and another century. They are still going strong -- small holes in some, but I'm still not looking to see which bags the canned goods go into. -- Joy Beeson http://roughsewing.home.comcast.net/ http://n3f.home.comcast.net/ -- Writers' Exchange http://www.debeeson.net/LakeCam/LakeCam.html west of Fort Wayne, Indiana, U.S.A. where it's a lovely warm day -- in January? To unsubscribe send email to [email protected] containing the line: unsubscribe lace-chat [email protected]. For help, write to [email protected]. Photo site: http://community.webshots.com/user/arachne2003/albums/most-recent To unsubscribe send email to [email protected] containing the line: unsubscribe lace-chat [email protected]. For help, write to [email protected]. Photo site: http://community.webshots.com/user/arachne2003/albums/most-recent
