Funny the way the internet changes your life.
I had the opportunity to go to Tescos this week since I was driving a rental car. I don’t own a car – it makes little financial sense given most of my journeys are either by bike, train or plane. So for the last few years I’ve got my shopping delivered via tesco.com or sainsburys.com depending on my mood.
Anyway, on those rare occasions when I have ventured into supermarkets, it’s usually been at inhospitable times (around 10 or 11pm), when the store is quiet and I can take my time. This week, I went in during the day, and it was akin to a descent into hell. I’ve discovered I’m totally intolerant of the modern supermarket experience. The stores are crowded, the shelves are crowded, it’s impossible to find the things you want.
A little background. Supermarkets are in theory a second home to me. I used to do the weekly shop with my mum for years, and then I worked in the local supermarket while I was at school. I know how they work as a customer and an employee.
But now, I can’t tolerate them. The internet is faster, less hassle. I can do an online shop in about half an hour, and I don’t have to fight through crowds. I don’t have to search the aisles, I can search the database. I don’t have to remember what I buy each time I shop – the computer does that for me. I don’t queue at checkouts. I don’t have to load the bags into a car, and unload them this end. This week as I walked round the store, it struck me as a curiously archaic way of buying food.
Looking forward, I can see the need for some optimisation. I don’t want to have to carry my laptop to the kitchen. I should be able to scan barcodes of things I’ve used as I throw the packaging in the bin, and the computer should add it to the list for next time. I should be able to select a recipe for next week right from my kitchen, and have things ordered automatically. It needs to be an easy, transparent process. The latest version of the tesco store is a significant leap forward in usability, but I’m not sure I’m interested in the store metaphor. Let me just do stock control of my own kitchen, with a few extras based on recipe books from time to time.
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I’m definitely with you on supermarket shopping. Sartre said “hell is other people”, and my local Sainsbury’s at almost any time of the day and week seems to be filled with entirely too many of them, walking too slowly, taking up too much space, making too much noise, and breathing too much oxygen
My solution is different, though. I’m trying to reduce my dependence on technology – I’m fed up with having to maintain PCs, whether they’re running Debian or Windows, to remember numerous passwords to websites that could easily use public-key crypto certificates to identify me, but mysteriously don’t, to worry about viruses, worms, and phishing exercises. Basically, I’ve had enough of “techno-cruft”, as I think a certain Alan Carter once described it.
My current solution is therefore to do one shop at week at Sainsbury’s, at the least busy time possible, and as quickly as possible, to get basics – tinned stuff, bread, milk, etc. Then anything I need during the week I get from the local shops. I guess I’m lucky in having both a good corner shop and a mini Tescos within 10 minutes walk of here (though I’m sure it’s only a matter of time before the latter drives the former out of business).
Maybe I should just resort to living on a diet of gray squirrel, which seems to be available in excessive quantities even closer to home..