Not such a bargain then

I don't know why but many of my middle class friends and colleagues have a penchant for shopping in Lidl and seem to get genuine joy - usually the more they earn the greater this is - from obtaining apparent bargains therefrom. "Look darling I've got a pair of underwater gardening gloves with a built in 5 megapixel camera for £4.99"

I'll be pointing them to this recent Guardian investigative report. Basically Lidl pay you shit and treat you like shit to sell shit. From what I've seen of the crap in their stores you'd be better off buying toxic waste. Obviously the work ethic of the 3rd Reich combined with the social policing of the Stasi lives on in the Lidl motherland.

On discussing the above with someone in the office I resolved the following that's been puzzling me for ages: you're fit and healthy and there's two of you and you've just arrived at the checkout with a bag of beans and you're asked, quite seriously "Do you need any help with your packing?" Now I suppose you should really respond with something like "That's really a bit of a silly thing to ask me isn't it? What is it about me that makes you think I/we can't get a bag of beans into a carrier bag unaided?" But then I don't go to Tesco for a social life and some of the assitants have mastered the subtle art of saying this in such a way as make it clear that they are just having to say it and there's a big bad slobbering monster under their till that will gnaw on their arse if they don't: and indeed there is - sort of! Evidently if one of Tesco's secret snooper shoppers catch them not parroting this to customers they get black marks on their record and can get disciplined.

So apart from covering the nation's trees and shrubs with windblown carrier bags you can probably work out what a deleteriuos effect on the nation's social interaction these sort of enforced facile face2face encounters in modern retailing are having: or maybe you can't by now.