Dear LPG, 

Here is a shopping thought.  People of our age are the ones that are more likely to avoid the automatic checkouts, have you noticed that there is a lot of time to think when you are standing in the checkout queue with a real person at the end.  This is exactly what I was doing when I had this thought…

Isn’t it funny that when we are buying something special we take a lot more time and care with our shopping protocols.  When I say special, I mean when you are buying anything out of the ordinary, such as something you have seen in a television advert and want to try, or something that you plan to experiment with for the first time; be it food, a gadget of some kind or something that you have either had to save up for or that has caused you to have those rhetorical ‘should I or shouldn’t I’ moments, but I am not talking about those.    

Have you noticed how much less care we tend to take when shopping for those items that you need to buy every week.  There are often those moments when you become the sort of shopper who gets a fresh pizza and then sees a frozen one in the next isle that looks better, causing you to make the swap.  It is obvious that you pick up the one you prefer, but what happens to the other one.  Do you retrace your steps all the way back to the isle where you first saw it and replace it, or do you substitute it for the item you changed it for?

Now be honest, are you the person who is responsible for the rejected frozen item which are left at the end of the conveyor belt at the checkout, furthest away from the cashier. How many times has the person behind you in that checkout queue asked if something that has been left behind there is yours, and if you told the truth, how many times would the honest answer be. ‘Yes, but I’ve changed my mind now?’

The next thing is, if you are the person who discovers the rejected box containing the frozen (and defrosting) black forest gateaux at the wrong end of the cheque out conveyer belt, do you bring it to the attention of the cashier or do you not even notice it?   

In this day and age, when we are all so much more worried about the effect that what we come into contact with can have on us, I hope that there are more of us who are willing to help the staff to get the stuff back into the freezer more quickly. So that it does not end up half-defrosted, and then put back into the fridge for someone else to buy…

HG, Ladywell 

…and LPG adds some information on today’s celebration…

(►►►)