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Roger Rabbits with |
“They’re going to have to rein the horses – before they stampede in the aisles.”
My mate ‘Bloke’ was talking about 5% discount day at the supermarket for we SuperGold Card (SGC) toting olds. Every Tuesday 5%. Spend $100, save $5 – whoopee!
“On Monday my neighbour with the pixie cut and bright red Lunar Park lips is inviting me in for a cinnamon cream oyster and cuppa. Come SGC Tuesday those lips have narrowed and hardened – she’s a tearaway, looking for a fight, or a saving, or both down the biscuits, cookies and crackers aisle at the supermarket.”
Bloke reckons we old folk “turn feral at the whiff of a buck to be saved”.
That’s we senior citizens he’s bagging – the mothers and fathers of the nation. Those who have helped forge this fine nation.
“You have to tell my story on Page 2. Warn people!” Forever the exaggerator is Bloke. However his story from the trenches of cheap Tuesday is a colorful one.
Almost clobbered
It started with a skirmish over a bacon hock at the front door of the supermarket. Some poor porker had sacrificed a lower limb and now an old biddy was brandishing it at Bloke. She resented paying $9.73 for the smoked lower limb, when a couple of years ago it cost just $2 or $3 yadda yadda…And it was Bloke’s fault. “So I suggested she put it back and she almost clobbered me with it.” Oh, the humiliation of being KO’d by a superannuitant with a bacon hock.
“I was going to ask what you do with a bacon hock but the trolley traffic behind us was getting grumpy and impatient. I blame Winston – it’s his fault.”
Well, the SGC is his baby – a proviso of the confidence and supply agreement between Winnie and Helen in 2005. But we can’t blame Winston for the behaviour. “Yes we can!”
Bloke had inadvertently stumbled in on a live, unconstrained SGC Tuesday at the local supermarket. “I needed some fresh fish.” Which begs the question, would you buy any other sort of fish Bloke? Slightly-off fish, manky fish, fetid fish?
Bad etiquette
Bloke is not a kosher card-carrying superannuitant – not yet, he’s a precocious 61-year-old.
But the supermarket experience reminded him of the dodgems. “Crazy. No rules. They just want to bash each other.” He reckons SGCers have weaponised shopping trolleys and will want bull bars next. “Trolleys every which way – bargains to the right of them, savings to the left of them – into the jaws of death. Into the mouth of hell, rode the superannuitants.”
Apologies to Alfred Lord Tennyson.
“The sound of tortured metal as trolleys and attitudes collide. Crash, clunk. There will be skin off shins soon. Where has the love and niceness gone.”
People park willy-nilly to chat, or to figure the best, cheapest brand of whatever. “And if you dare ‘excuse me please?’ them, it’s like a declaration of war! There’s glowering and glaring because suddenly their bad aisle etiquette is my fault.”
He reckons the graces we subscribe to every other day fly out the window on SGC Tuesday. “Why does a 5% saving bring out the worst?” I don’t know. Didn’t know it did.
“Have you not had a shopping trolley laden to the gunnels with pantry staples and ready-to-eat- meals rammed into your calves from behind?”
Hang on! There’s a traffic snarl of Hewletts Rd proportions down aisle seven – household essentials, cleansers, laundry powders, detergents, toilet paper. Five shoppers have inadvertently created a blockade with their carts – they’re yapping and no-one’s going anywhere.
Almost clobbered
Add to the hullabaloo, Maisey lobbing questions to hubby Bert who’s stuck on the other side of the muddle. “You want some whole wheat chocolate biscuits dear?” We need a cop and road cones.
“Put on your ‘pointless’ hi-viz vest Winston and come restore order,” demands Bloke.
Winston’s got bigger fish Bloke – like educating the people of Aotearoa who insist calling Aotearoa Aotearoa when the name Aotearoa doesn’t have official standing, even among the first people of Aotearoa.
A frazzled Bloke said he saw “loads of seniors being trucked in” to the supermarket – but he’s given to hyperbole. What he saw were ‘people-movers’ from local retirement homes or rest homes shuttling we oldies to the supermarket, keeping us independent, active, stimulated.
Protocols
Bloke suggests some SGC Tuesday supermarket protocols.
- One-way traffic – trolleys up one aisle, down the next.
- No stopping, no passing.
- Motorway on-ramp traffic lights regulating trolley flow, crucial to an orderly shop.
- Calling out inconsiderate trolley parking.
- Compulsory shopping lists to reduce dilly-dallying.
- Travelators, or horizontal escalators. Climb on, cruise, buy, then spat out at the checkout.
- Backing alarms and indicators on trolleys.
- Refresher courses on smiling and politeness for rude, aggressive customers.
- Charm rewards – incentives for completing a tidy, timely shop without injuring, insulting or arguing.TWS
A bit of whimsy you think? Well, I know someone who goes to the supermarket on a Tuesday in their lunchbreak to watch the circus. “For the s#*t and giggles because it really is like that.”