h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

How tricky it is to get to pirbright, where I need to be to see my sons passing out parade

If you *have* to see him passing out...it might be easier to give him a few valium?

The big question is - has he been properly trained?
When passing out, does he know to lie to attention?

~*~You can't start at the back and work your way forwards because the tills and the entrance are both the same side of the shop. You'd have to start at the back and zig zag through the aisles (which run in the wrong direction) to cover everything, if you wanted to finish at the front.~*~

I'm not following. It sounds just like every other grocery store I've ever seen. Just take your empty cart past the produce section to the back of the store to begin with and only once you've gotten to the back begin to fill it up. Then gradually work your way forward to the produce section again, which, if I understand you, will be right next to the checkout lines. Problem solved.

My preferred method is to put the soft stuff at the front of the trolley and the heavy stuff at the back. But I'm only shopping for me so my trolley isn't usually overloaded.

I also prefer to travel down the middle of the supermarket. I park my trolley (as considerately as possible, I might add) at the end of the aisle, go and get what I want, then come back and put it in the trolley. It's so much easier to nip between other folks' inconsiderately abando...sorry...parked trolleys without one of your own.

Deb

I don't want to make a big issue of this as it's a thread for throwing petty hates in the ring and running off again ()

Imagine a large rectangle. The entrance and the exits are on one side of the large rectangle - at either ends. You go in the entrance (past the veg and fruit) and the shelves are arranged parallel to the narrow sides or the long sides of the rectangle. Even if I did go to the back of the rectangle and work my way forwards, I would have to decide whether I wanted to end up at the bottom left (where the veggies are) or the bottom right (where the tills are).

All very confusing to a flustered once-a-week shopper.

Now I think about it, my mum's local W*itr*s* is also arranged with the veg at the beginning, but it's a quarter of the size of our supermarkets here and the tills are quite near the entrance. And she only has to shop for one OAP.

Ah, TC, unless you have suffered the very special circle of Hell that is German Supermarkets you can't possibly imagine how bloody awful they are.

As for the trolleys - did I ever tell you (I'm sure I have about 50 times) about the interesting 3 years of meetings I had with a local big-name supermarket about their trolleys in general and the general problems of being a weekly shopper with a baby and very small toddler?

Try Polish Biedronka, it's like Lidl. Stuff everywhere!

Ph: when you come down in the morning to discover that someone else has used all the bowls so you wash one to discover they have also used all the milk....

A related PH: when you ran out of milk at 10pm, are making tea at 11, only to discover there's no milk...

Or someone has left you a dribble of milk/ one square of toilet roll.

PH: That moment you realise you've crunched on a snail underfoot

You should pay more attention to where you're walking, you murderer.

PH: Jeeves and Wooster music stuck in my head

PH: trip to morrisons specifically to get scampi which was on offer,
not only do they not have any in they haven't had a delivery of it at all and they only ever stock that product when it's on offer....
they also don't know when the delivery will arrive.

ph: bus arrives at certain station. I email for details, am given a name. I Google Map it. Three stations come up... why can't these guys just be specific? I've emailed 'em back, hopefully they're a bit more specific this time.

PH: illustrations or other representations of horses where the reins are coming out of the cheekpiece, at the back of the head just below the ears. Not only are the artists too lazy to actually look at what they're drawing, they can't work out that they'd have no effect there, or why the horse would then be wearing a bit...

PH: This is something I've complained about before, but not on this thread, AFAIK. You see a specialist and tell them when you can do an appointment and when you can't (or would rather not). They make a note of it and tell you when your appointment should be. Then a letter comes through with your appointment date, and it's on a day when you've said you can't make it.

The letter with my appointment date arrived nearly 2 months after the previous appointment. If the person doing the appointments (which isn't the specialist, btw) had their act together, I would have had it long before that. As it was, by the time I got the letter, I had trouble changing the date to one that suited me.

oh that happens to us all the time, especially with the Gruesome Twosome's braces, the doc says "in X days/weeks" and the receptionist says "oh no, you have to come in X+5 days/weeks" and then the doc, when you go - says "you should have been here weeks ago"

It's not uncommon for me to get a letter telling me that I have a hospital appointment that very day. Only trouble is, the post never comes until I've already left for work...

...and incidentally, those appointments, which are physically impossible to get to because I wasn't informed in time, probably count among the figures for non-attendance at appointments that they are always complaining about...