TUESDAY 17 APRIL 2007 - COHO MEMO

Lots to talk about this week, so here goes! We have had the vernal equivalent of an Indian summer over the past week or so and the temperature outside is in the 70s. So, ever mindful of the environment Sainsbury's have turned on their air conditioning and, my goodness, is super cold in the area with all the fridges. Must remember to wear my arctic clothing next time - a Crew t-shirt (or is it tee shirt?) was just not man enough I'm afraid. Anyway, on to the shopping. Whilst shivering in the vegetable area I noticed a little sign under the small clear plastic bags that you put your loose vegetables in (incidentally when these are scanned in at the checkout out they come up as 'Parsnips Loo' or 'Bananas Loo' on the little screen above the cashier. Hopefully not a reflection on the quality of the produce!) that says they are 'recycleable'. Hmmmm. I cannot believe that if these go to landfill they would take anything less than 1000 years to biodegrade and I suspect what Sainsbury's mean is that you can use them again, which is hardly recycleable in the usual sense of the word. I wonder who I can ask about this - I know I'll e-mail the big orange (the Sainsbury equivalent of the big apple) and put the question to them. I'll keep you posted! Now, at the cheese and ham counter I am referred to as 'Sir' by the ladies that serve (bizarre, I know, but then I am of a certain age) and today was no exception - "Thankyou Sir" said Mary or whatever her name was (I should have checked, I'm slipping). Coincidentally immediately after I had finished my purchasing a young lady asked if she could take one of the small 'recycleable' bags at the side of the counter (them again!) to which the reply was "Of course, love". Love? It must be an age thing. I'm sure a lady of a certain age would be referred to as 'Madam' as I am as 'Sir' but below that age it's 'Love' for all! One for you linguistics experts to get your teeth into! There was a big row near the sausages this week. Little Johnny had been sent off by his Mum to buy a stamp and had come back with a book of 12! Much lecturing from Mum about "Why didn't you buy just one?" (answer - the queue where they sell them was too long) and "£5, that's your pocket money gone for a week" (answer - pursed lower lip). He looked most disconsolate, poor lad, and if I had had £4.08 (the cost of 12 stamps, her math is worse than mine!) I would have bought the book off them to relieve the misery. I use quite a lot of stamps so they would have come in handy. Actually it would have been only £3.74 as they would have kept one, but even for this lower amount I didn't have enough change on me. So I had to leave this forlorn little group to continue with their angst and soul searching. I did see them later on and relationships had thawed somewhat (moving out of the fridge area would have helped) as there was some more normal conversation and even the hint of a smile! Remember the Dyson Animals and my prediction that they would be extinct within a week? Not so! There are now 4!!! They must be procreating after the store closes! I still cannot believe these will sell, but, then again, you never know - we are a nation of dog lovers. This week I saw an attractive young lady in a wheelchair doing her shopping with her basket on her knees. I watched her for a while (journalistic interest only) and as she had no assistance 50% of Sainsbury's products were simply out of her reach. This raises an interesting point about Sainsbury's policy for disabled access - no problem with getting into the store (plent of lifts, wide aisles and so on) but when in the store then what happens? I wonder if Sainsbury's provide a helper if they are asked? And do they ask this routinely like they ask if you want help with your packing every time you go through the check out? Of course, I should have asked her how it all works but when I thought of this I was pretty much finished and she had disappeared. Maybe one week I should feign disablement (a la Andy Pipkin) and see how I get on? On to the checkouts. No No 24 (sic) again this week - I am not hopeful of ever getting through this one as the aisle has a couple of broken chairs in it and the bit where you stick your shopping has piles of magazines & newspapers on it, so clearly it is seen as a bit of a dumping ground and not a real checkout. This week my cashier had a routine that I'd not seen before - she put certain items in smaller bags (those 'recylceable' bags again!) before I stopped her. I assume it was something to do with putting smelly stuff (fish, dishwasher powder etc) in its own bags so as not to taint the rest of the stuff but, my goodness, is it really necessary? Has the world gone completely bagging mad? I asked for some petrol vouchers (as I said I would) and the cashier looked at me blankly which I took to mean "Sorry, Sir, petrol is not on a promotion at present". Or perhaps "Sorry, love, petrol ..." Whilst in the queue I did some interesting reading. When I released my trolley from captivity in it was a page from an internal Sainsbury's e-mail headed 'Plinth Update'. This seems to be some kind of stock control edict from the big orange as the first item was JS Wild Alaskan Salmon (which I had bought ... ) and saying that 'We currently have excess stock of this line and are expected to incur significant wastage' and going on to tell my store what to do about it, in this case to reduce the price (now I could have thought of that) and to 'dress this product into the meat plinth in the space allocated for Young's salmon fillet promotion'. Not sure what 'dressing' means (perhaps the Alaskan national costume?) and also why fish is in a meat plinth and whatever is a plinth anyway? And won't Youngs be a bit cheesed (fished) off if they find they've been booted out? The memo went through all sorts of products - Cathedral City, jumbo king prawns, even Champagne! Some were having their promotions extended and some were late with delivery from suppliers and so on. And each one had detailed instructions as to what to do and a name and London telephone number to call in case of query. So, presumably Sainsbury's have an army of stock controllers in London who are micro-managing each product in each store. Wow! I have to say I was hugely impressed. I thought I was organised but this takes this biscuit (metaphorically speaking, of course). In fact I am so impressed that as anything else would be a complete anti-climax I'm finishing this dairy entry immedi

Items bought 25

Cost £42.87

Average cost per item £1.71

Checkout number 20

Nectar points 1282 (I feel a cashing in coming on)

Active Kids vouchers 29