Three Years Ago
Traffic in Leighton Buzzard was brought to a standstill when an elderly shopper on a mobility buggy inadvertently hooked up to a line of more than eighty shopping trolleys gathered up in a supermarket car-park for return to base. The driver of the buggy, who asked not to be named, left the parking area unaware of the extra payload behind, though he did detect a certain sluggishness on acceleration.
At a sharp right-hand turn several hundred yards on, the trolleys swung wide, taking out two shop-fronts. The buggy continued east for a further mile, coming to a halt as it attempted to circle a small roundabout, only to find itself stuck in a queue of stationary shopping trolleys.
According to Darren Pook, aged 39, Head of Customer Experiences, 'Shopping trolley theft is something we take very seriously, with prosecutions leading to fines of £75 per trolley.'
Five Years Ago
Renewed efforts were made to track down and withdraw from sale a potentially lethal Christmas toy shipped in from the Far East and widely available from market stalls and retail outlets across the country. The Joly Satna Kiddi Fnu Pak had been found to contain a reindeer & robin-patterned boomerang in moulded plastic with inside edge sharp enough to decapitate a small child looking the wrong way. According to Health & Safety officers, a month-long campaign of product recall had failed to see the return of a single boomerang.
Ten Years Ago
Trading Standards officers in Cheshire were successful in their prosecution of a breakfast foods company which sold a packet of Hawaiian Surprise Fruity Oat n' Raisin Mix that was found to contain just one raisin. 'When the picture on the box shows bunches of grapes, you don't expect to be chasing round the cereal bowl in search of one raisin,' said regular Fruity buyer Maureen Snickelthwaite, aged 47, of 14, The Willows nr Runcorn. A spokesperson for the company apologised for the imbalance, saying the manufacturers had been let down by their dried fruits supplier.
As a Tesco employee, I was very interested in the Leighton Buzzard story. I'd also be interested to know if legal action was taken against the elderly buggy user. Personally, I'd ban old people from supermarkets. They're just a damn nuisance and get in the way of people who spend loads more than they do.. If I had my way, there'd be big aircraft hangers where lorry-loads of food and tins of cocoa could be dumped - no shelves - just a bloody big pile - and let the moaning old devils fight for it.
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