The tortoise that cared too much

Now the building work is almost complete (just one more day to go) we brought Tiggy and Sophie, our beloved moggies, home from the cattery on Saturday. We had to do a monster clean to get rid of all the post-building work grime (so that the babies didn’t end up coated in dust). So on Friday night after work the marigolds went on and we cleaned for six solid hours. We had to clean EVERYTHING that we own. It was hideous.

Prior to the cleaning commencing I had to nip to Somerfield (the not so super, supermarket that is walking distance from the house) to buy said marigolds, kitchen roll and other cleaning necessities. It was a real toss-up between going to the ‘Field’ or jumping in the car and going to Sainsburys. The reason for the conundrum being that I absolutely loath the Somerfield experience. In theory it shouldn’t be that bad – it has a good selection of stock (they even have Yarden’s humus which is my number one favourite snack item), it’s quite spacious, it’s clean but there is just something so depressing about it. Friday’s experience just reaffirmed why I should have jumped in the car.

I walk to Somerfield, pick up a basket and start gathering up my supplies. I then proceed to the check-out which they need to rename ‘get frustrated on your way out’. I was in a queue of about 15 people, shuffling at snail speed through the sweet-racked maze created to control us. There were two people on the tills and I notice for every one person that this chap served, the women on the till next door managed to serve at least two and a half people. Now having worked on a till in M&S in my youth, I can be a bit uptight in the till queuing scenario (I was a speed demon on the till). So I start obsessing about why the differential in speed between the two cashiers – I had plenty of time to do this as it took me 20 minutes to get to the starting line. I couldn’t work out what was going on but found out as I approached the tortoise (not the hare) with morbid trepidation.

Now I know that I like good customer service but Mr Tortoise took this to a whole new level...

He picked the first item out of my basket, looked at it for about two seconds, then looked me in the eye, smiled then said ‘do you want this?’, I said ‘yes please’, he then turned the item around to find the barcode, looked at me, smiled, scanned the code, then placed the item in the bag. This happened for EVERY single item in my basket. It was unbelievable. I managed to stay cool, although my response to the question ‘do you want this?’ declined from the aforementioned ‘yes please’, to ‘yes’ to ‘a nod’ deteriorating to me just grimacing at him.

I nearly ran out of the building with my shopping yelling ‘free, free at last, thank god I’m free’, although in reality I walked home with plastic bags digging into my hands and grumbled away to myself. Bless the tortoise – he cared a lot, just too blinkin’ much.