First aisle problems
You Can Stick Your Supermarket Up Your Aisle of Albion writes: Dear Westie, So C***s (supermarket name withheld Ed.) got rid of single use plastic bags at the checkout, which is a good thing. But – let’s be real here – only so they could charge us for paper bags instead. They still use single use plastic for everything else. They’re throwing the environment down the drain, but – hey! – they’re not alone. The more we buy things in bags the more they’ll bag ‘em up for us. FYI C***s, I don’t need a bag for a lettuce, I like to buy single carrots, I don’t want someone else to cut my pumpkin up for me and then bag it. Nor do I want little individual barcodes on my apples, oranges and mandarins. What’s the point? Who is this helping? And don’t get me started on self-checkouts, the ever yoyoing price of Tim Tams or those new little gates that threaten to shut you in if you accidentally scan your ginger as a potato. It’s easier to get through customs at LAX with a beard and suntan than it is to get out through those things. I could go on, but I won’t. Nor do I really have a Dear Westie question, it’s just that C***s changed all the aisles around last week and that always sets me off. Rant over.
Well, YCSYSUYAOA, I don’t know what to say other than “…okay…”. I was going to reply with something glib about these being first world problems, or in your case, first aisle problems. But dismissing your problems as “first world” is to mistakenly minimise the impact that huge entities such as C***s have on our daily lives and wellbeing. Each of the changes you complain about is, in isolation, trivial. But when you consider them as a whole, they’re an awful, death-by-a-thousand-cuts attack on the Australian psyche; a coordinated and intentional Orwellian plan to disorient and confuse us so that we end up spending more than we need to, and it’s working! On you anyway. And me too, if I’m honest. They rearranged the aisles at my local C***s last week too, and I’m still to recover. Sheesh! Time for a cuppa, a Bex and a good lie down. But before I sign off, a quick word to those who think rearranging supermarket aisles is a good idea – just because you move the tampons to where the anti-dandruff shampoo used to be, doesn’t mean I’m suddenly going to start menstruating!
From last edition
In last month’s Dear Westie, we discussed the awful unfairness of the unwanted and unflattering nickname. Whining Winnie the Whinger from The Westsider office, said we should have been more sympathetic in our reply, but that’s typical of her. I wonder how she got that nickname? Derrrr? Others in the office, such as Shellback, the slowest Sub-editor on the planet, didn’t even get around to reading the letter. But in all seriousness, insulting nicknames are no laughing matter, unless they are genuinely funny and even then, only if they are given to someone else.
