I was only there for paprika but up to 67 per cent of the stuff we put in our trolleys are impulse purchases so really, I’m fighting inevitability. Maybe I shouldn’t have got a trolley. You don’t need a trolley for paprika. And cat food isn't even my department. But there, on the end of the aisle, a Whiskas promotion. Spend £6 on Whiskas and you get a free Whiskas bowl worth £5.
I suppose I could buy some Whiskas. I’m trying to stop buying Whiskas because it is the most nausea-making of pet food to serve first thing in the morning but, you know, it’s here, on the end of the aisle. And there’s a free bowl. We don't need new cat bowls but, as I always say, you can never have enough free crap clogging up your cupboards.
I take three packs of New! Bite ’n Chew and one pack of Old! Fishy Flavour. Total: £12. I take two bowls because we have two cats, six times two is twelve and I don't want one feeling left out. Not, to reiterate, that I wanted the bowls. I was here for paprika.
At the tills a few hours later as the girl rung up the many trolley full of stuff I hadn't been here for, I asked her to check the bowls were going through free. I don’t know why I asked this. Something just felt wrong.
‘They’re not,’ she shrugged and asked me to retrieve the four packs of cat food to check.
‘I’ll just leave the bowls,’ I said.
‘Can you take them off?’
She rung her bell.
The queue grew impatient.
An older, less wiser supervisor arrived. Between me and the girl, we managed to explain the problem.
‘Can I just leave the bow–’
But she was gone, off with hiking boots and Kendall mintcake, to examine the end-of-aisle offer in the flesh. She may be some time.
The impatient, lengthening queue clucked and tutted and stomped as if to say this was my fault entirely. Me with my gullible approach to cat food purchase.
The girl looked at me.
I looked at the girl.
I cracked.
‘I’ll pay for it and I’ll sort it out at the customer service desk.’
‘Fine.’
‘Will you tell the supervisor if she ever comes back?’
I like to be a bit snarky in these situations.
At the customer service desk, I found a man with a regal air and a nose for fishiness. He'd seen and heard it all. I explained that I had been lured in by the end-of-aisle Whiskas promotion even though I was only here for paprika which, come to think of it, godnammit, I had forgotten. The free bowls had cost me £10. Could I just get a refund? He could keep his bowls.
He looked at my receipt like it was Christians and he was Nero.
‘You’ve only been charged for one bowl,’ he pointed out damningly.
‘But the girl said-’
‘Let me see the cat food,’ he said as if he had said, ‘Bring me the cat food.’
I dug deep through my impulse shop and found the New! Bite ’n Chew and the Old! Fish. Immediately, he saw the problem. The Old! Fish was not part of the promotion.
'J'accuse,' he may as well have said.
‘Why were they all on the promotion bit at the end of the aisle then?’ I said. 'It's not as if the cats give a monkeys what type of flavour they get.'
‘Okay sir. Lets keep things friendly.’
Wow.
‘Look, I didn’t even want the bowl. Can you just refund me the bowl?’
‘Yes sir,’ he said, re-scanning the bowl. ‘I’ll tell you what I’ll do. I’ll refund you the bowl and I’ll let you keep the bowl. How’s that for a good deal?’
He smiled at me like a benevolent god and then looked only slightly hurt when I didn't fall to my knees and offer praise to his almightiness.
I wanted to say, ‘Not as brilliant as you think, mate, given that it’s exactly what should have happened in the first place without all the horror at the till and this irritating exchange now.’
But then he said, ‘Do you want to leave your shopping here while you get the paprika?’
Aisle nine, he said. Right next to, oh look, a special offer on dishwasher tablets.
Please help with a very, very, very, okay not very important
piece of research for my God of Small Things column. Marmite - how do you feel
about it. The Unilever website says, "Ever since Marmite yeast extract was
first introduced to the UK in 1902, it has caused a great divide in
Britain." I love it but H feels completely ambivalent. Some days, she
likes it, others, not. Please spend 12 seconds answering the following
survey. 