ME AND Sainsbury have not been getting on lately. I could name women who now get their thrills in the Ocado van. But so far I have been loyal. I rack up the Nectar points. I often drop in four times a week. I still recall the old days. How at first I hated the arrogance — plonking this great concrete car park on former playing fields — but I was gradually seduced by the largesse, the glamour, the Starbucks coffee shop. Sainsbury was a bit of posh.
But it has changed, let itself go, grown unreliable, forever making excuses. I feel taken for granted. Frankly my eyes are wandering. And I am not alone. This week Sainsbury admitted its first-half profits would be around £125 million, two thirds lower than last year. Even Asda has overtaken it and the market leader, Tesco, is pulling the middle-class mammas who five years ago would never have piled their Cherokees with blue and white bags. Like the Tories at the Hartlepool by-election, Sainsbury is getting thrashed and cannot figure out why.
At my not-so-superstore, a duty manager is doing what duty managers should not need to do: stacking toilet rolls on to empty shelves. City analysts have noted that Sainsbury’s sales per square foot have declined. Against all retail trends, fewer customers come here now for a “one-stop shop”. But there is no point drafting weekly menu plans when key ingredients will be “Sorry! temporarily out of stock”.
The shelves often have a forlorn, ravaged look, as if le tout Dulwich has heard talk of a dirty bomb and panic-bought all the corn-fed chickens. On Friday afternoon last week there was no beer left for the weekend. I mean, duh! And the halogen light bulb — that egregious stealth tax on our DIY endeavours — has not been sighted for so long that a friend is bathing by candlelight.
The nice duty manager breaks off to tell a woman that they don’t have her usual coffee. “I hate Sainsbury!” she replies with passion. He shrugs. The good staff want to leave. The distribution system is demoralising. The fruit and veg guy can no longer say: “We’re OK for potatoes,” or “Send more salad because the weather’s good.” It is all done centrally. Stuff just turns up. And they must shift it, at a profit too. But because they can’t, labour costs are cut: shelf-stackers are laid off. Then folk like me get narked when they can’t find the couscous.
For the mothers at my sons’ school, Sainsbury is our high street, our village market. You always see someone you know. Almost despite ourselves, we care about it, although it is clear that Sainsbury could not give a two-for-one about us. (As I wrote before, its contribution to our summer fair was a £20 shopping voucher.) The store’s huge site is an environmental disaster: plastic bags dangle from every tree, broken trolleys lie in ditches, rats scurry through the rubbish in the undergrowth.
And gradually everything about Sainsbury has started to irritate me. Like the “Taste the Difference” range whose smarmy name implies you must pay a premium for food to taste of anything at all. And the “reward card” which rewards only if you buy, say, a dozen salmon steaks that they are desperate to flog off fast.
I am done being loyal. So this week I checked out what I was missing. First I tried Lidl, but with more security guards than till staff, it is the shopping equivalent of a shag in a nightclub doorway with a dodgy bouncer. Not my bag at all. But then I am not cheap: I like to be treated nice. So Asda didn’t do it for me either because I would trade its groovy £2.50 George range T-shirt for a trusting relationship. And Asda is one suspicious guy: it is a ticket to park, a quid for a trolley, booze is locked away in a cabinet, there is only one exit in order to stop illegal trolley dashes. Even a £3 knicker-set has a great fat security tag.
But then I met Tesco. A litter-free car park, not a single gap on the shelves, tempting up-market treats, racks full of good quality socks and pants. What is more, halogen bloody lightbulbs were in stock, and at £1.49 compared to £5.99! It was like tumbling into the arms of a lover who smelt nice, had bothered to shave and was keen to please after years with a gruff, unnoticing husband. I imagine. Frankly all that is stopping me from leaving permanently is convenience, a short walk compared to a drive to Tesco. But listen up, Justin King, Sainsbury’s new chief executive, if you still want me — and legions like me — prepare to pucker up for some premium wooing. Now I know what I have been missing.
Death down under
THESE DAYS funerals have started to outnumber weddings or even new babies. After a week of maudlin conversations about elderly and dying parents with a succession of friends, my uncle died barely a month after my aunt. Pneumonia, said the post-mortem examination, which obviously could not detect a broken heart.
Then I called a friend in Australia who is keeping a bedside vigil for her boyfriend’s father. “He’s been in a coma for a week, but he’s rallying,” she said. “At this rate we’ll have to cancel the funeral.”
“What? You’ve booked it already and he’s still alive?”
“Yes, it’s supposed to be Friday but at this rate . . . .”
So what was she going to say? “Please hurry up, the ham rolls are getting curly under the clingfilm?” My friend started to get a little shirty: “Well, his wife was going crazy with nothing to do, so we thought it would take her mind off things.” How very pragmatic, I thought, and how very Australian.
The carpet test
I SHALL never again complain about the Brussels gravy train squandering our taxes. I have just had a letter through my door to say that the European Commission has awarded a grant to tidy up the housing estate backing on to my house and it is giving me a lovely new garden fence. Free! Now I’m pushing for immediate entry into the single currency but, unlike Gordon, I just have a single test: whether the Commission will stump up for my new staircarpet.
janice.turner@thetimes.co.uk
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