Supermarket Employees – Tell me your secrets

well yes it’s made by Colgate-Palmolive, but it’s ALL branded Colgate. there are hundreds of varieties (colours) of the same thing. I don’t buy it on principle.

Jamie, I didn’t buy any biscuits. I know this is going to be a fairly contraversal statement but I’m not really that keen on biscuits.

I quite like dried fruit though.

Jamie, I didn’t buy any biscuits. I know this is going to be a fairly contraversal statement but I’m not really that keen on biscuits.

You’re dead to me.

Jamie, I didn’t buy any biscuits. I know this is going to be a fairly contraversal statement but I’m not really that keen on biscuits.

How about shortbread? Jaffa cakes? Surely there must be some human left in you???

Jaffa cakes?

Oh dear. The lowly jaffa cake, confused about it’s identity – not a cake, not a biscuit and rubbish at being either! Yuk! 😡 They really should put it out of it’s misery and finish it off…

Shortbread, on the other hand….. 😀

I thought this was going to be a totally different thread. Is disappoint.

I was poised to contribute with my juiciest tales of low-end 1990s employment. Oh well, another time.

Yes. More tales of night time aisle cricket required.

Take all the reduced stuff off the shelves and move it to different parts of the shop, always gets the faties annoyed as they have to wallk further to get 50 p off some damaged crisps

I used to work in M&S about ten years ago, used to be a total pain moving all the stock round in the food bit. Orders from above just arrived via email for the mangers to dish out how they wanted it all laid out.

I managed to get transferred to a newly opening store into operations working in the back. Meant you could hide in the tea room, freezers or storage areas instead of doing any work. Unload the trucks double quick when they turned up and then go home early. Was a mix of younger lads and older blokes who had retired and just wanted a few hours work a week.

Wasn’t a bad job, could take home all the food out of date for nothing if you wanted. I noticed last time I was in that they have started to mark short date stuff down to try and sell it before its out.

1978 working in Fine fare. Happy days. lobbing bags of sugar over the shelves into neighbouring aisles to try and hit co-workers, to hit a poor evening shopper instead.. oops.

price guns. was never good with those..

price guns

a whole industry killed by the advent of bar coded products and till scanners.

well yes it’s made by Colgate-Palmolive, but it’s ALL branded Colgate. there are hundreds of varieties (colours) of the same thing. I don’t buy it on principle.

And instead by some of that artisanal Aquafresh… Oh wait… thats just made owned by GSK who also own Sensodyne

Oral B? Nope, just P&G, the same people who make pampers and pringles.

Crest? P&G again

Signal? Unliver’s attempt

In fact Colgate is about as close you get to a toothpase that isn’t just a brand owned my a multinational consumer products company. It still is as Colgate-Palmolive own all sorts of brands from detergent to pet food but a little bit less than the rest since the Colgate bit of the company was actually founded on toothpaste!

if biscuit manufacturers want to attract me to the biscuit aisle (as opposed to supermarkets tricking me into one), they’re going to have to fit a lot more chocolate on them. And dried fruit.

Can biscuits have cheese in them? That too.

Or ASDA had this really weird way of organising some things by region but other things by food type.

So fig rolls weren’t in the biscuits or cakes but in the “irish” section (they don’t seem particularly Irish, but they were manufactured there). Some fruit juices, bread, biscuits etc were in the Polish section (again, not particularly Polish – just with polish labels). Marshmallow and Haribou were in the Halaal isle (no gelatin). A particular source or seasoning could be found under any one of – Chinese/Indian/West Indian or in the pasta isle (which, strangely, wasn’t labelled “Italian”)

But there ware also aisles labelled Biscuits/confectionary/fruit juices etc. with similar but slightly different products.

I could only conclude the shop manager was on drugs.

Who actually steps inside a supermarket these days anyhow, surely you do it all online ??

Can biscuits have cheese in them?

Those are crackers.

Haribou

Lol.. sweets made by Inuit?

Lol.. sweets made by Inuit?

No, they were on the Eskimo aisle.

Its just all about making shoppers break their routine and have more of a chance of buying additional stuff isn’t it (if you generally buy the same bits in your weekly shop you likely don’t go down quite a few aisles).
I do have some sympathy for parents at the checkout though with all the sweets and their kids screaming for them, that’s a little too cynical on the supermarket’s part for me.

And another thing.

ASDA used to sell the nicest thing in the entire world. It was these nachos with some cheese and chilli seeds. You put everything on top of the nacho’s, put ’em in the oven and then out came the most delicious food you’ve ever tasted.

Then they stopped selling them, I dunno health scare or something.

BRING THEM BACK!

Asda Morley is the greatest supermarket ever. All genuinely chirpy/helpful staff, day in, day out.

Don’t know how.

In fact Colgate is about as close you get to a toothpase that isn’t just a brand owned my a multinational consumer products company. It still is as Colgate-Palmolive own all sorts of brands from detergent to pet food but a little bit less than the rest since the Colgate bit of the company was actually founded on toothpaste!

I think you’re missing my point. I don’t care who own the brands, I just want a different brand and NOT Colgate branded toothpaste. I wouldn’t care if Colgate-Palmolive also made this brand, even it was called ‘Armpit Toothpaste’ – at least it would be a perceived choice.

One of the reasons Woolworths went under was the 24(?) stock cycle changes that had to be done every year.

Imagine you’ve got a product that flies off the shelf…..then is replaced by another product as its times up. Took alot of work/effort at head office/distribution level..

I used to work in sainsburys. I can’t believe how rude some people can be to checkout staff. I don’t want a best mate but not even saying hello, throwing things in your face and trying to get you fired are all standard things in the supermarket.

My mate dave also worked there he was so broke that one time he bought a load of unlabelled tins form the ‘staff shop’ [section of manky shelves upstairs with broken packages and super low prices].

his plan was open a tin each day – see what was in it and what he could have to go with it. Beans= beans on toast. Bolognese = pasta. this was sort of working for a few days, although i think he did have toast and tinned carrots one day. Anyway i get a phone call one evening.

“what you having for dinner?”
“dunno pasta?”
“can i come round?”
“yeah of course, you run out of tins?”
“no. not exactly.[long pause]”
“yeah?”
“I got dog food”

I used to work in sainsburys. I can’t believe how rude some people can be to checkout staff. I don’t want a best mate but not even saying hello, throwing things in your face and trying to get you fired are all standard things in the supermarket.

Where do you stand on this?

Sainsbury’s has apologised to a customer who was refused service by a checkout worker until she had ended her mobile phone call.

The customer, Jo Clarke, was told her shopping would not be processed until she had finished talking on her phone.

Ms Clarke was shopping at the chain’s branch in Crayford, south east London.

I used to work for a major electrical retailer. They started a new store layout thing and I can’t remember the stats but when they transformed a store to the new layout every one of them saw a decent increase in sales afterwards.

There’s a whole “science” to store layout and it works.

Luckily for customers they have hired some new kids during the re-fit called “go getters”, who wander about holding a sign saying “ask me if you can’t find stuff”. But they are new, and also don’t know where anything is!

On a similar vein one of the big Tescos in Cardiff used to emply youths on roller skates who could quickly nip off and grab something from the shelves if you reached the checkout and had forgotton something.

They don’t do it anymore though, probably something to do with H&S I imagine.

Who actually steps inside a supermarket these days anyhow, surely you do it all online get your wife to do it??

FTFY

just cut all this crap out about supermarkets and where they put stuff, i couldnt give a chuff as long as they supply me with biscuits, cakes, sweets, muffins, croissants, and ice cream SOMEWHERE in the store….and toasted tea cakes too.

This thread reminds me of The IKEA Maze Of Doom. The horror… 😯