Our old friends in Tesco get a mention again today on this site. This time they are helping Nanny to impose id cards via the back door.
How?
Just ask James Earls, a gentleman of almost 60 years of age, who uses a walking frame.
He popped into his local Tesco Express recently, in St Annes Lancashire, to purchase a packet of fags.
Can you guess what happened next children?
Yes, that's right, Tesco insisted that he produce proof (ie id) that he was over 18 years old.
When he couldn't provide the proof, the staff refused to serve him.
Was this a single incident of dim witted stupidity by a member of staff?
No!
This policy is 100% applicable for all customers in that store, no exceptions.
A spokesman for Tesco said:
"The store has introduced a policy, on a trial basis, to require ID from all customers wishing to buy age-restricted products to help prevent underage sales.
We will of course keep this under review and would like to apologise to customers for any inconvenience this may cause."
Tesco, doing their bit to help Nanny push through her much hated id card scheme.
Hit Tesco where it really hurts, in their "bottom line":
Boycott Tesco!
Drop them an email here customer.service@tesco.co.uk
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Again I offer the suggestion, if you find a Tesco (or anywhere else) with this policy, get the biggest trolley you can find, fill it up with as many small items as will fit into it, plus a bottle of booze, then spread them all over the check-out. Present the booze, and when the cash-drone asks for PoI just walk out leaving then to sort out the mess.
ReplyDeleteOf course, make sure the policy is still in force before doing this, or you may find yourself having to buy 3000 packets of Polo Mints!
I recently devised a potential solution to this type of problem here whereby I propose introducing a personal policy "on a trial basis" reserving the right to refuse to purchase goods where it appears all members of staff have not recently visited China (doesn't everyone have a passport with a Chinese visa stamp? I know I do.) There's a card there you can print out, laminate, and carry around.
ReplyDeleteUnfortunately many shops are now justifying this sort of lunacy due to "Nannys" officious employees (snitches) trying to catch them out for under-age sales.
ReplyDeleteI would really like to see Tescos go down the pan, the way they steamroller their expansion plans through regardless of local opinion or need is simply breathtaking.
Boycotting from now on !
ReplyDeleteAbout 150 quid a week.
If several hundred thousand of us do the same it may make them think.
I remember a couple of years ago being refused a bottle of wine in Tesco because I couldn't prove my age (I was 22 at the time). So I paid for everything else, walked the very short distant to the Budgens up the street and got a bottle of wine there with no fuss at all. If Tesco want me to spend my money elsewhere because of petty bureaucracy that's fine by me!
ReplyDeleteI still have to buy the odd item from Tesco but most of my shopping money now goes to Iceland and Aldi. Not so long ago Tesco refused to sell me a pack of Ibuprofen and a pack of flu powders. Firstly, they aren't the same drug and secondly, ibuprofen doesn't come under the "maximum number of tablets in one sale" guidelines.
ReplyDeleteIf I was that intent on committing suicide all that I have to do is go around all the shops buying up paracetamol. On the other hand I've already got some pretty dangerous prescription drugs in my medicine draw - a handful of those and half a bottle of whisky.......viola!!
It beats me how a company that has grown so much and has been so very successful commercially could introduce such a silly policy.
ReplyDeleteI suspect that the till drones can't be trusted to use their own judgement and thus the reason why such a policy was introduced....I suspect it will be only a matter of time before Tesco reverses this policy decision as it will cost them dear in terms of disgruntled customers.
Sainsbury's stopped me once for ID (I'm in my high forties and look as though I've spent most of my life in Siberian salt mines as a pit pony) - I was buying a teaspoon to use at work. Apparently teaspoons count as "cutlery" and cutlery counts as knives.
ReplyDeleteI can't even fool people with guidedogs that I'm under eighteen, the dogs snigger if I try.
Odd thing is, I went straight from the checkout conveyor to their garage forecourt and bought 80 litres of highly flammable liquid explosive - and nobody paid the least bit of nevermind. Now all I need is somewhere that will sell me some milkbottles and some rags without ID and I'm all set. ...
Does anyone have any statistics on teaspoon killings?
Does anyone have any statistics on teaspoon killings?
ReplyDeleteWhich ones? The stats on the number of incidents of self-inflicted deaths by choking on teaspoons, or incidents of teaspoons being used as assault weapons?
I normally do not frequent such low class shopping emporiums. Alas, my missus informs me that our local Tescos now sells jellied eels at £1.25 per 8oz. In these cash strapped times, this is an eel bargain compared with jellied eel stall, and as a confirmed cockney eel addict I must shop for this delicacy there.
ReplyDeleteI do hope they don't ID me after all eels do have sharp bones contained within their lovely little fishy bodies - hmm there is no warning of such on the bowl I am about to nosh tongight. Think I had best contact my local shysters and sue should I 'choke' on said bones at some stage.
n a related note: I see that Scummerfield judging by the posters all round the booze section have recently upped the unoffical proof of age from 21 to 25, I mean WTF?
ReplyDeleteWankers the lot of them.
P.S. Why doesn't the word verification picture appear in the Opera browser?
Don't blame this idiocy on Tesco - it's all down to Nanny's little minions.
ReplyDeleteOur village has 2 Co-op stores (managed from different parts of the organisation it seems). One is especially convenient so we use it regularly, know most of the staff well and have known one or two of them personally for many years.
Last year at some time they had the local 'secret shoppers' around with a Lolita of some kind and, despite the staff being pretty vigilant, trapped one of the young till girls into selling said Lolita some resrivcted product for which the store was chastised and the till kid was issued with a fixed penalty notice for £80. That's probably a month's pay for her as a part timer.
So now they are ultra careful as a matter of principle, though I have yet to persuade them to ID me.
I was there with my 22 year old daughter (also a regular) a few weeks ago buy some comestibles and a bottle of wine for me and my daughter was asked for ID. OK, she does not look her age for various medical reasons but even so ...
As with most places the stores have simply decided to play cautious and set their own rules about having to look at least 25 (whatever that look is ...) or risk being ID'd.
In general the kids, who have been out on the town underrage on borrowed ID for years, just accept it. It's very insidious.
What my 22 year old finds harder to accept is going in to the same Co-op store buy a lottery ticket as she has done from time to time for many years and still being ID for 16 DESPITE carrying her car keys and other obvious indicators that she is over 16.
Nanny and her pointless minions are all pervasive. Control for the sake for control. Ask any gas fitter or electrician how their licences to operate are threatened by annual changes in the rules which cost us the consumers very dear.
As I get older, and most especially looking back over the last 10 years or so, I am beginning to understand how earlier generations came to feel that the world had change around them and left them high and dry in a place they felt they did not recognise.
I am starting to feel the same way, not through any dis-involvement with the technology around (a traditional reason to become out of touch) but because the social structure and approximate moral guidelines that were previous generally acceptable most of the time seem to have been warped into something illogical and odious that offer absolutely no benefit at all. Usually the introduce de-benefits.
It seems this stupidity is a rather suddenly evident global phenomenon.
I wonder why?
At least my local Tesco seem to make plastic bags available reasonably readily most of the time. The Co-op, seems to have purges whereby the staff offer them singly and grudgingly from under the counter as the 'store Radio' makes pronouncements about cutting bag use and saving the planet.
I get the feeling that Tesco is more prepared, if the 'trials' suggest they might benefit from it, to take on Global Nannying than the Co-op. For that, should it happen, we should applaud them. But they have to run the 'trials' first to be able to offer evidence of the stupidity.
Mind you they will need to reverse their recent price hike on Wine before I will need another of their Wine carriers!
There was a time when a story such as this would have caused me to dither and dather and spasm uncontrollably with disbelief beyond all credible believableness.........now I just think, well well, another one.
ReplyDeleteFor some strange reason, it reminds me (and the spoon story) of an incident some time ago. I have no sense of smell, and I phoned the gas board about a check on a property I was buying. I mentioned that they do it free for those who are disabled or handicapped, expalaining that I had no sense of smell. I was asked to wait for a few minutes. They came back and told me that no sense of smell was not on the list!!
number 6 said...
ReplyDeleteI normally do not frequent such low class shopping emporiums.
Sorry, but the plural of emporium is 'emporia'.
Julius Caesar said... Sorry, but the plural of emporium is 'emporia'.
ReplyDeleteHmm.
Tescoria?
Sainsburyia?
ASDA seems to defy all pluralisationismistics.
Where exactly did the Romans do their shopping?
Is "boycott" a sexist term, Nanny?
I never ever shop at tesco I use their free cash points and go spend it at their competitors, childish I know but "every little helps".
ReplyDeleteThe plural of emporium, if you must use the word, can equally be emporiums or emporia, according to whether you regard it as still a Latin word or English by adoption.
ReplyDelete"The plural of emporium, if you must use the word, can equally be emporiums or emporia, according to whether you regard it as still a Latin word or English by adoption."
ReplyDelete...you mean like hippopotimi?
What's the collective noun for hippos?
ReplyDeleteHippository?
Hippocracy. n: An oversized bureaucracy with a strong herd instinct usually found wallowing aimlessly in the mire but extremely dangerous to all around it when motivated to action of any sort. Can be at its most dangerous when individuals strike out on their own agendas.
ReplyDeleteIndentification: Very large and ugly. Big mouths, bad teeth. Mostly live in or by rivers.
" Stop Hitting Me Officer said...
ReplyDeleteWhere exactly did the Romans do their shopping?
Whereever it was, if anyone tried the sort of nonsense on them, as we have read about in this post, would vbery quickly have become intimately acquainted with the point of a javelin!