24 January (Part 3) - The ups and downs of supermarket shopping. Stannnarghh!
Different
people attribute blame for breakdowns of the Abbey Wood station lifts to
different organisations. Network Rail will tell you the lifts were the biggest
that would fit in the available space, others will tell you that they were not
built for such intensive use. Take your pick but I’ve not noticed them out of
order so far this year. (†)
No one could say that the travelators in the new Abbey Wood Sainsbury’s were not built for
intensive use but they keep breaking down too.
I wouldn’t use Sainsbury’s if I didn’t have to do the shopping for the elderly
aunt in East Ham, she has been a Sainsbury’s shopper most of her life and demands
quite a lot of their own brand stuff.
I went in there sans Pentax last Thursday and the up travelator was not working but not blocked off.
On the previous occasion it was as shown in the photograph. For some reason my
knees were creaking - they don’t usually - so when I got to the top I asked the
assistant lolling around waiting for their self service tills to break to find
out why the working down travelator could not be reversed, and let me know when
I had finished shopping.
Fifteen minutes later I asked her what the manager had said about the travelator.
She hadn’t asked which is the sort of service I have come to expect from the
staff in Abbey Wood Sainsbury’s.
So I waited for the so called manager to come and a woman wearing a Hannah badge
showed up. She said it was nothing to do with Sainsbury’s and the decision to
run the travelator in an unhelpful direction was entirely Stannah’s who had
looked at the problem but gone away. She was clearly not manager material so I
left with my opinion of Sainsbury’s amply confirmed.
I am asked to believe that Sainsbury's had not specified reversible travelators,
Stannah had not bothered to fit a switch and Sainsbury’s management was content
to leave management of their facilities to another company. The lesson to me
continues to be, don’t shop in Sainsbury’s and when my creaking knees finally
give up don’t buy a Stannah chair lift.
The
self-service till - which for once did not let me
down - provided a ticket that said
I had saved £1.28 compared to using my preferred Asda; so two days later I took
my Sainsbury’s receipt down to Belvedere and priced up the branded items in Asda.
The Sainsbury’ ticket was sort of right. Prices varied from between three pence and 50 pence
both up and down but I was shocked to see that Sainsbury’s was indeed cheaper. But only by eight
pence. If my aunt had not asked for a box of chocolates the savings made by
shopping in Sainsbury’s would have been a whole pound more than they were.
I doubt I’ll be changing my allegiance any time soon though.
† Within a few minutes of the above being published the
usual suspects told me that I am wrong. The Abbey Wood station lifts have been
out of order this year.