Tuesday 12 April 2016

Can you believe this sticky, Lidl situation?

In writing this, I am apologizing to everyone who was behind me in a recent Lidl queue when I was trying to buy a box of butter. You know, I actually like my local Lidl, it being yet free of those direful automated checkouts and their robot voices. Instead, I had the pleasure of a nice young gent serving me. All good, but when the nice young gent tried to run the 500g box of Olive ® spread past the barcode reader, the reader would not, well, read. ‘Afraid I can’t sell you this, Madam,’ he said, ‘the butter is not on the stock database.’ ‘Eh?’ The nice young gent then offered to run and fetch a box of Clover® or Utterly Butterly®? I jumped at the latter product. The nice young gent ran away and returned two minutes later with a box of Utterly Butterly® and – same result – the barcode reader would not acknowledge the product was in the store. The nice young gent ran away again to seek another product. By now, dark and mutinous mutterings were emanating from the checkout queue, and more than a few desertions happened. Advise me: what do you do when in a situation like this? Who do you apologise to and who – if anyone - is to blame? The store? The manufacturer? The shelf stacker? The bad luck fairies? Not the nice young gent certainly, who was doing his best for me. Sure, I could have paid for the remaining items and found my butter elsewhere, but I was anxious to witness the conclusion to the rather weird scenario. My nice young gent returned presently, this time with a selection of products. He ran a box of I can’t believe it’s not butter® past the reader and – presto! – a price flashed on the monitor. ‘I can’t believe it’s worked,’ I said. The nice young gent didn’t think it funny, either. Has anything like this happened to anyone else, anywhere, ever?