This is a little bit of a departure from my usual blogging, but here goes.
Supermarkets are a central feature of modern lives, as we were all reminded during the Covid lockdowns. They provide an essential service, and we are all indebted to supermarket workers. It's undoubtedly a difficult and often thankless job.
However, being on the other side of the till can also be thankless, and I think I've accumulated enough bad experiences with my local Tesco to warrant a blog post.
I live ten minutes walk away from the Tesco in the Merrion Shopping Centre, Merrion Road. I'm very grateful it's there. I've spent thousands of euro in this supermarket over the last few years, and I visit it most days.
I've had some very positive experiences with staff there over the years, especially junior staff, who tend to be particularly helpful.
I've had other experiences which are not so good, and which are in fact ongoing.
Like almost all supermarkets, this one is very active in pushing customers onto self-service tills. There are rarely more than one or two manned tills available, and sometimes there are none at all. This has become so common it's barely worth mentioning, although it's a very depressing social trend.
Having reluctantly migrated to the self-service tills, however, it's irritating when even these are closed down. My local Tesco has quite a number of self-service tills. I think they have nine or ten. It seems weird that they keep closing these so that long queues of customers are queueing at four or five tills.
Another gripe is the customer service desk. It's rarely open, in my experience, and the hours that it's actually staffed seem to be reducing all the time.
Sometimes I've pointedly stood at the customer service desk while a member of staff is working nearby-- or indeed, actually standing behind the desk, attending to something more important than customer service. Invariably, the staff member helpfully tells me: "This desk is closed", before disappearing.
The less-than-enthusiastic attitude to customer service extends to vouchers. For Clubcard members, Tesco gives vouchers for various discounts. I use these very reluctantly (usually persuaded to do so by my nearest and dearest), since at least half the time the staff fight me over them. I read the conditions of the vouchers very carefully to make sure that I'm using them correctly, but that's no guarantee I won't find myself in a battle over them. Generally I'm directed to the customer service desk...which is, naturally, empty and unmanned.
Easily my biggest problem with the Merrion Road Tesco, however-- and this is why I've kept it till last-- is their very aggressive attitude towards closing time.
I get it. Shops have to close. People have to go home. But surely customers should be allowed to shop in some kind of peace right up to closing time, rather than being bombarded with ever-more urgent messages and verbal reminders for the last forty or thirty minutes of opening hours.
Indeed, it's frequently the case that Tesco Merrion Road closes early. I don't like to walk into a shop when it's closing, but sometimes it's necessary. I've quite often had the experience of running all the way from my apartment to the supermarket to pick up that one item I urgently need...only to find the supermarket has shut down five minutes (or more) before the advertised time.
To be fair, it's the staff of the shopping centre (not the supermarket) that do this. But if the supermarket advertises itself as open until a particular time, it should be open until exactly that time. Surely there can be some conferral between the supermarket and the shopping centre on this point.
My worst experience with Tesco Merrion Road was some weeks ago. I very urgently needed to get some particular provisions from the store. I ran all the way, and did my shopping as quick as I could.
I was the last person going through the tills-- the self-service till, obviously, since the manned tills are closed by now.
When I reached for my wallet, I realized to my consternation that I had forgotten it in my panic. I phoned my wife to update her, and she suggested I download the app for a payment card that we use. By now, the staff were helpfully telling me that the store was closed, doubtless imagining that I didn't realize this.
I downloaded the app. It was agonizingly slow, as you can imagine. At this stage, three staff members were hovering over me. One of them was an employee of the shopping centre, while the other two were Tesco staff. They just stood there, right beside me, staring at me as I tried to install the app.
The app required a password to set up, as most apps do. You, dear reader, might find it easy to concentrate on something like that with three people hovering over you, glaring at you. I don't. I tried and failed again and again to enter matching passwords.
Eventually, I gave up. I abandoned my shopping, and let the shopping centre employee escort me to the exit. I'll admit I passed some bitter remarks as I did so.
My wife was hurrying to the supermarket as we walked out, bearing my wallet. We had a bit of an animated conference with two of the Tesco employees as they left. To be fair, they apologized, and were quite gracious. One of them, seeing how flustered and upset I was, has been especially nice to me since.
I don't want to castigate supermarket employees. But I do think this particular branch of Tesco has a culture of hustling customers out of the shop unlike almost any I've encountered before. (I say "almost any", because to be honest, the only worse example I've ever experienced was the Tesco in the Omni Centre in Santry.)
It's not the same every night, but quite often, the closing-down announcements begin twenty minutes (or longer) before closing time and will be repeated every five minutes or so. As well as this, managers are going around verbally reminding customers that the store is closing-- as though you could possibly miss that fact. (I'm reminded of those episodes of Star Trek involving an auto-destruct sequence: "This vessel will auto-destruct in seven minutes thirty-five seconds..")
I've had experience of implementing a closing time myself, of course, in the library where I work. Sometimes in the smaller branch libraries, where I might be the only person there and closing time is ten at night. I only make one announcement, even where the guidelines suggest more. I try to treat people like responsible adults.
Perhaps the problem is that Tesco itself doesn't take a realistic view of closing times, and isn't giving their employees enough leeway to close the store down. Maybe blogging about it here will help that. It's worth trying.
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