Friday, February 08, 2008

adventures at tesco

first of all, i guess tesco is an english company, right? so i was perusing deb's copy of "notes from a small island," by bill bryson, which i had already read but discovered that she had a different copy of which included a glossary of words that might be unfamiliar to a speaker of american english. for example, i learned that a "cornet" is an ice cream cone. but anyway, i saw tesco in the glossary. obviously i knew what it was because they are all over prague. however, in bryson's glossary it was listed as "Tesco's." that leads me to wonder - do certain dialects of british english feature the unnecessary addition of a posessive? or was it just a mistake on bryson's part? because i thought this was a characteristic of western pennsylvanian american english. almost everyone, especially older citizens of the area, add the "'s" to the proper names of certain stores, bars, etc. for instance the drugstore chain "Eckerd's" or "Buckhead's" instead of buckhead saloon. i will have to do some research on this.

ANYWAY, it amazes me how easily tesco can successfully manipulate consumers. as i was walking from the entrance to the toiletries area, i noticed a display in the middle of the main aisle. the "middle of the aisle," in case you didn't know, is the place where they put the most worthless items on sale. the good sales -- you have to search for those. they remain hidden deep in the aisles of their respective items.

this week's sale was for random household items -- tools and the like. bungee cords, wrenches, huge rolls of packing tape, scissors. that kind of shit. things you don't realize you need until they're right in front of your face for 30% off. i even found myself slowing down... yeah, maybe i do need 24 AAA batteries. but what would i ever do with that many batteries? i don't have the luxury of owning many battery-powered items. i noticed a lady finely inspecting a yellow, plastic flashlight. someone else carrying an armful of clear tape. things they all probably didn't need until they unsuspectingly stumbled on this sale display.

why does this work so well? and why are the things i need not displayed so prominently? just once i'd like to walk into tesco and see facewash! bubble-wrap lined mailing envelopes! paper towels! right in front of me. (where the HELL are the paper towels in the narodni trida tesco anyway? they're not with the household cleaning supplies, and not with the toilet paper. WTF.)

instead i spent a half an hour combing the shelves to ensure i didn't put foot cream on my face.

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