Friday 4 July 2008

Never Shop When Hungry

This is a tip as old as time. It makes sense, if you shop when hungry, you by the sort of things you would like to eat then and there, in my case, crisps and chocolate. Wondering through my local 24 hour supermarket on a full stomach isn't a great idea either, I came back with next to nothing.

I can't shop when hungry, I can't shop when full, was I to eat something, wait a few hours then go shopping? I'm just not organised enough to plan my life to that level. I had to find a solution before I whithered away to nothing (ok so that was unlikely to happen but let's not underplay this).

For a while I would make out a shopping list over a few days and stick to it, this way I would have a list of items balanced out over varying degrees of hunger. This, of course, didn't work as I shop after work and I never had the foresight to take my shopping list with me in the morning.

To the rescue comes Tesco online, it's great, I figured I can book a delivery slot three days into the future as late as possible so that I will be home by then, put a few essentials into the basket then checkout. Now for the twist in the plan: over the next three days, I add things to the basket so come delivery day, I have food, ingredients and junk!

This worked well for a bit, I was even willing to offer the benefit of doubt over two missed deliveries. One day they made a really bad delivery with a whole heap of substitutions, a few basic notes:

Plastic bottles of Coke are not the same as glass bottles!

Potato croquettes are not the same or even the least bit similar to chips.

If you have no rechargeable batteries, send me regular batteries of the same size, not rechargeable batteries of a completely useless size.

I can (and did) forgive them for all this but the last order I received had broken eggs in it. I wanted to make an omelet and everyone knows you can't make an omelet with broken eggs. It was more the fact the driver made a quick exit as he clearly knew what had happened to the eggs and rather than telling me, he thought it best to offload and go.

Last week I switched to Ocado and frankly it's better! Courteous customer service staff and drivers he even offered to put over socks on so that he would not damage my carpet! (I should note I declined the offer as my carpet isn't that great).

A few more weeks and we'll see how it goes but so far, I'm impressed.

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

"All right, i'm a failure, i can't make an omelette without breaking eggs!"

http://youtube.com/watch?v=zhlPCsbjRz8

Marianne said...

I hear you loud and clear - Tesco once delivered the smallest aubergine in existence- it was like a dwarf breed of bonzai aubergine, and from thence I switched to Ocado. And now I miss Ocado so much: here I have to have one of those granny trolleys to go to each of the little shops!

Josh said...

Dan, Welcome to my humble soapbox. He worries too much as if Stephen Fry can't do it, the rest of us mere mortals don't stand a chance!

Marianne, That sounds hilarious! Sorry, I don't mean to belittle the granny trolley look.... I assumed the French drive up to a carrefour and stock up for a month or so (amazingly it's the only place I've been to where I could buy a whole shark!) leaving you to buy fresh things like bread, veg and fruit from Carmen Miranda, all of which will fit nicely in a bicycle basket!

anonemouse said...

so now crisps and chocolate are bad for you too?
whatever next???

Josh said...

Next I intend to attack the myth that carrots are good for you.....

Ariane said...

No! Do not attack the carrots - they ARE good for you! (Unless you eat too many, in which case you turn orange. Apparently this is true.)

Josh said...

I'm sorry Ariane but the truth must come out!