Skip to main content

Bringing it home


When Tesco announced a while back that it was closing a bunch of stores I’m sure many people felt, as I did, an obscure sort of hubristic satisfaction. Even if you don’t pay much attention to their more unappealing habits, there is a vague sort of sense that companies like Tesco are the enemy. If pressed, one might wave one’s arms vaguely and mutter something about forcing suppliers prices down, or express doubt about the ethical quality of their supply chain. Also Tesco= supermarket, and supermarket = death of high st, and probably that nice little specialist food shop you like, but only go in once a year. Because you’re in Tesco.

So their increasing travails have been a low level of background mirth in my world over the last year or so. Tesco suffering? Ha, and furthermore, ha. Ohh, share price tumbling? Poor lambs. So it came as, if not a jolt, then at least something to pull one up short when I read the list of stores to be closed and discovered that the Ormskirk one sat nestled there. I’d thought it odd that it was closed when I jogged past it on an evening run, but, preoccupied as I was with a howling gale, didn’t give it a great deal of thought.
Now, I’m still not shedding tears. But it’s easy to think about a company’s problems in the abstract, but when you can put faces to it well, it’s not as simple. I didn’t often go in there (the dislike is genuine), but nevertheless you recognise people. Actual people. People who turned up for work yesterday morning and were told to go home.

And there you have it, the way it was handled clearly = evil faceless company (seriously? You let them travel to work before telling them to go home? What?). So Tesco struggling is a Good Thing. But Tesco struggling has just put a bunch of people you know that faces and voices of out of a job which is, uh, not .

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

What is happening?

An unpleasant, but in the grand scheme of things quite minor, incident occurred at a local school yesterday. Two lads entered the premises looking for another kid they wanted to assault. The school followed protocols and was locked down until the situation was resolved. Grim enough in and of itself, but not exactly a massive piece of news. Except, of course, on local Facebook pages, where a cast of many hang around visibly thirsting for events like this. This isn't a post about them, however. There is something desperately sad about a million posts on the same subject, everyone breathlessly recycling the same story without checking whether it might have already been covered. It speaks to an unfulfilled existence. Nor is this a post about Facebook and it's local pages, though they are a weird and interesting ecosystem. Were it not for running the pub, my Meta presence would be minimal, I need to be on there for work, and stuff like this is a necessary accoutrement. No, what depr...
Post a Comment
Read more

Inedible

"He says it's inedible" said my front of house manager, as she laid the half-eaten fish and chips in front of me, and instantly I relaxed.  Clearly, I observed, it was edible to some degree. I comped it, because I can't be arsed arguing the toss, and I want to make my front of house's lives as simple as possible. The haddock had been delivered that morning. The fryers had been cleaned that morning. The batter had been made that morning (and it's very good batter, ask me nicely and I'll give you the recipe some time). The fish and chips was identical to the other 27 portions I'd sent out on that lunch service, all of which had come back more or less hoovered up, we have have a (justified, if I do say so myself) very good reputation for our chips. But it was, apparently, "inedible". When it comes to complaints, less is more. If you use a hyperbolic word like that, I'll switch off, you've marked yourself as a rube, a chump, I'm not g...
Post a Comment
Read more

Worthless Art

Ah, we're back to calling humanities degrees rip-offs, are we? What a semi regular treat that is. There is a persistent strain of thought in British public life which runs thus: things are shit, blame clever people. When a politician needs a convenient punchbag, higher education is always a quick and easy mark. Everyone hates students, right? And those lecturers, bit up themselves, aren't they? And so Kemi Badenoch, bereft of ideas, takes up the cudgels once more, because why not? It's not like she's got anything else sensible to say. Might as well try and score a few populist points. Cuh, English degrees eh? What use are they?  Yes, this week, the erstwhile leader of His Majesty's Opposition decided to wander down a tired and well-trodden path and try to score a few points off the back of the much maligned Arts and Humanities. She's not the first, I highly doubt she'll be the last. She set out plans to a somewhat sparsely attended Conservative Party Confere...
1 comment
Read more