STORIES|Bad Day at Tescbury’s
I’m standing, day-dreaming, in the long Express Checkout queue, “10 items or less”, wondering whether I’ll ever have the courage to tell them it should be “fewer” not “less”, and whether they’ll understand even when I do manage to explain it. According to my till receipts, the Store Manager here is called Mark. If he’s the tall, bulky, black-haired dark suit, all of twenty-nine, that I see patrolling the aisles from time to time, then I fear the worst. My small basket, seven items, I think, is getting heavier as I wait. Obviously the word “Express” means something different here. As I change hands, a polite voice speaks softly at my shoulder.
‘Excuse me, sir, do you think we could have a word?’
Shuddering out of my secure contemplative nothingness, I look round to find a man of roughly my height, probably around forty, with few, if any, distinguishing features.
‘Er . . . me? What . . . a word?’
‘Yes, sir. Just a word. Over in the office there. It won’t take long, sir, if you wouldn’t mind. Bring your basket with you, sir, and we can sort that out later.’
‘But . . . what . . . er, what for?’
‘Just about, well, about shopping, really - that is, if you can spare the time, sir.’
I suppose it’s some wretched market research thing about how often I come here, what things I mostly buy, whether there’s anything I want that they don’t have, what I think of their prices, that sort of thing, trivial, very boring, almost as boring as the shopping itself, but I suppose they’ve got to do their job. Do I, nevertheless, feel just remotely flattered to be asked? No, not really. I’ve been selected completely by chance from the Express Checkout queue and it won’t matter one way or the other what I reply to his pathetic questions. Should be all over in five minutes.
‘Er . . . yes, OK then . . . as long as it doesn’t take too long.’
‘Thank you, sir. Just over this way, if you will. Shall I take this for you?’
He relieves me of the basket as we walk across to the office. We pass the toilets (cleaned hourly, with the cleaner’s initials against the time on the sheet attached to the door), and the entrance to the cafeteria where coffee and Danish pastries work their sustaining magic on harassed mothers with the fractious contents of buggies and pushchairs.
‘In here, sir, that’s it. ‘
‘Thanks.’
‘Do sit down, sir. Simon Harrington, Shopper Interface. It’s a subdivision of Marketing Psychology.’
Marketing what? Did he say Marketing Psychology? What are they all about, brainwashing me into liking sliced bread or buying toilet rolls twenty at a time? Shopper Interface. What rubbish. I suppose that really means Talking to Customers.
‘Oh, er . . . Graham Brown, sort of freelance, really.’
‘Good. Good. Very pleased to meet you, at last, Mr Brown.’
‘At last?’
‘Well, yes. You see, we didn’t select you from the queue at random. Don’t be alarmed by this, but we’ve been observing you quietly and discreetly for some time. With your very best welfare in mind, of course.’
‘Observing me? My welfare? I don’t quite . . . I mean . . . all I do is come in here and buy a few things – ‘
‘Exactly, sir. You buy a few things. But only a few. That’s why we’re interested in your welfare. We want to help you adjust to a different modus operandi. That’s what we call your m.o.’
‘But . . . but there’s nothing wrong with my welfare. What you call my m.o. is simply what I do. I come here to buy the things I want to buy. And that’s that. Isn’t that what everybody does in a place like this?’
‘Oh, no, Mr Brown. I’m afraid it isn’t. Most people behave very differently from what you’ve just described. You don’t quite fit the normal pattern. That’s what we call The Shopper Norm.’
‘But . . . how does that matter? And, more to the point, how do you know I don’t fit the . . . the Shopper Norm?’
‘Ah, I’m glad you asked me that, sir. That’s where the evidence of our observations comes in. This is where we come down from the clouds into the world of unbiased, observed facts, the evidence we need for scientific analysis, the repeatable phenomena of your particular m.o.’
‘You mean . . . you mean you’ve got records of me, made without my knowing?’
‘Er, well, yes, we do, sir. As you probably know, the till receipts tell us a great deal about what’s going on in the store. They’re not just about the products. They’re about the people, too. Recurring credit card numbers give us a handle on individual shoppers. But, as I said earlier, it’s all to do with your welfare. There’s no harm involved, all completely confidential, no ulterior motives at work here, Mr Brown. It’s all about your relationship with us . . . in this entirely unthreatening environment.’
‘But . . . but surely my welfare, as you call it, has nothing to do with it. Surely all you want is for people to come in here and spend loads of money –‘
‘Ah, now we’re coming to the nub of it, Mr Brown. ‘Spend loads of money’. Exactly. And is that what you do when you come in here?’
‘Er . . . well, no, I don’t spend ‘loads’ . . .er, for the obvious reason that I only buy a few things.’
‘Exactly, sir. You only buy a few things. You see, sir, according to our observations, your m.o. brings you dangerously close to the borderline.’
‘Borderline? What borderline?’
‘The borderline, Mr Brown, of being categorised in our very lowest shopping echelon. If we’re not careful, you’ll be perilously adjacent to sliding into the Uninformed Shopper category.’
Whew! This is clearly the first climax in Simon Harrington’s procedure. He sits back in his chair, clasps his hands together in front of him and regards me slightly smugly and slightly sternly. There you are, he’s thinking, you’d no idea what a critical situation you were in. Now I’ve told you. Now you know. It’s a bit like receiving bad news from your GP. This conversation is obviously going to take rather longer than I’d imagined. Still, now we’ve started, I might as well see it through. I really need a few quotes from Vance Packard here - The Hidden Persuaders. That’s where all this sort of stuff came from, subtle psychological ways of making us think we need things we don’t actually need at all. He’s probably never heard of it. Too young. At the right moment, I may be able to stop him in his tracks, play him back at his own game.
‘So you can collate all my till receipts and analyse my purchasing patterns. Is that what you’re suggesting?’
‘More than suggesting, Mr Brown. I’m stating that that’s precisely what we can do. And have done. We know, for example, that your average shop is seven or eight items, and on most occasions they include the 500 gram packet of KP Original salted peanuts at £1.32 per packet. Never the Tescbury’s own brand, always the KP Original.’
‘Yes, that’s certainly true. I always buy those.’
‘There’s also often a one dozen pack of our own brand 5% lager in the 440 ml. cans, though not every time. I must say I have to congratulate you there, Mr Brown, that’s a real bargain. Bulk buying always brings down the unit price, as I’m sure you know.’
‘Well, actually I happen to like the flavour of it. That’s the reason why I buy it. I like it.’
‘There’s no better reason in the world, sir. But as for most of your other items, they’re a bit variable, probably depending on fluctuating use at home. I imagine Mrs Brown saying something like ‘Oh, if you’re going down to Tescbury’s, could you pick up one of these and some of that.’ And then she gives you a short list of up to half a dozen items.’
‘Yes, I’d say that’s much the way it happens. Isn’t that normal?’
‘Oh, yes. Very. But it’s what you do when you get here that isn’t. From our observations, it seems you come in briskly, pick up a basket – never a trolley - go straight to the different places for your individual items, collect them from the shelves, come to the Express Checkout, check out and leave the store. You don’t look around at the other shelves, you don’t pop across the aisle to see what’s on special offer today. You don’t even browse through the fruit and vegetable section as you come in. Nearly everyone does that. It’s the first thing they do, look at the fruit and veg. You don’t. You bypass it completely.’
‘That’s because I’m not going to buy any. My wife gets all that herself when she goes shopping.’
‘Ah, well, she probably does her shopping properly. To my certain knowledge, she hasn’t been flagged up as a borderline case. Not at all.’
‘I do my shopping ‘properly’. I come in, get what I want, pay for it and go. That’s how I deal with shops.’
‘That’s just our point, Mr Brown. That’s not shopping properly. That’s the old-fashioned method, something you probably picked up from your mother when you were young. It’s all very, very different now.’
Yes, I did go shopping with my mother when I was little. We used to go down to town at least twice a week. We queued at the butcher’s shop, then went round the corner to the grocer’s shop. My mother would tell him what she wanted, item by item, and he’d take it off the shelf behind him and put it on the counter. There were a couple of wooden chairs near the door for other customers to sit on while you were being served. When she’d finished her list, he’d go through everything and add it all up. Then she’d pay for it. No credit cards then, or trolleys loaded with stuff you couldn’t possibly carry home without a car. Hardly anyone had a car. If it was too heavy to carry, the boy would bring it round on the trade bike after school.
And no quiet, discreet observation going on, either. Thinking of that, they’ve obviously got more information on me than this Simon is letting on. Time I took some initiative, steered things round a bit, put him on the defensive if I can.
‘Look, one thing does interest me here. How do you know my movements in such detail, the way I go round the place once I’ve come in? I don’t dispute that that’s the way I do it, it’s perfectly accurate, but I wonder how you know all that.’
A gleam of pleasure spreads across Harrington’s face. This is another moment he’s been waiting for: showing off with the surveillance technology. It’s smug time again. He leans casually towards the monitor screen on his desk and clicks.
‘It’s all here on the CCTV, sir. Just have a look at this tape.’
And there I am, entering the store, getting my basket, gazing briefly around, duly bypassing the fruit and vegetables, as I always do, and going straight to the aisle where they keep the salted peanuts. Then, on this particular occasion, to the beer section for the 5% lager. The camera follows my route from place to place until I come to the checkout, pay and go.
‘There you are, Mr Brown. That’s you and that’s your pattern. Very much the same every time. You can’t be inside the store for much more than ten minutes sometimes.’
‘I’ll have you know I’m sometimes in the Express Checkout queue for ten minutes!’
‘Ah, well, that’s something we’re looking into very closely at the moment, sir. It’s quite a debate among senior management – whether to have more Express Checkouts in this store or do away with them completely, encourage our shoppers to buy more items, make their visit more worth their while.’
‘If you do away with them, I may have to think about going to Adli or Didl instead. After all, they’re noticeably cheaper. As I’m sure you know.’
‘That wouldn’t be a good idea, sir. You see, it’s the same with anything in the marketplace. You get what you pay for. What you think you’re saving in money terms, you’ll be losing in quality. And, looking at you, Mr Brown, I don’t think you’d be all that happy going round Adli or Didl. They’re not so shopper-friendly as we are. Loads of stuff all piled up everywhere. Poor lighting. Narrow aisles. All a bit tacky, frankly. Not the sort of comfortable experience a person like you is accustomed to.’
I don’t really think of going to buy things as a comfortable or an uncomfortable experience. It’s just a rather neutral thing I have to do from time to time, when I need things. Comfort, as such, doesn’t really come into it. I just want to get in and out again as quickly as I can. What is he on about?
‘Plus, though I’m sure you’ve never seen it this way, shopping isn’t just about getting what you want and paying for it. Many people see it as a leisure activity. Increasingly. It’s most certainly a social activity.’
‘Leisure? Social? What can you possibly mean? It’s just shopping.’
‘I can assure you, sir, that plenty of people, men and women, come here to shop and also to meet people they know. In fact, many of them hope they will bump into someone they know. That’s another thing about going to Adli or Didl. I wouldn’t want to sound snobbish about it, but I think you’d be very unlikely to run into anyone you know there, your type, people of your style. We all prefer to knock around with other people of our own kind on the whole, much more comfortable that way.’
‘But I don’t come in order to meet people. I simply come to buy the few things I want.’
‘That’s exactly my point, sir. If you did, you’d make the whole experience so much more rewarding, for all concerned.’
‘You mean if I met someone I know, I’d stay in here longer and probably buy something I hadn’t intended to buy when I first came in. More rewarding for you, certainly. I can see that.’
‘It could just happen exactly like that, sir. Exactly like that. I can show you CCTV footage of people - you may even know some of them - every time they come in, waiting at the corner of a particular aisle because they know a friend of theirs will be round any minute and they can stop for a chat. Now, while they’re waiting, what do they do? They look at the products on all the shelves in their field of vision, and now and again they nip across to a shelf and pick something off it, and bingo – straight into their trolley. Then their friend comes along, they tell them about it and, before you know what’s happening, the friend has gone over to get one as well. Two units sold where it might have been none, but for the social aspect.’
‘Hold on a moment. You’re trying to get me, and everyone else who comes in here, to buy more. Wasn’t it this branch that was talking about something called ‘overtrading’ in the local paper a few months ago? When you announced another branch being built on the other side of the town? I must say I was surprised to hear any company complaining that too many customers were buying too much of its products, and leading them, I presume, to make more profit than they would like.’
‘Ah, that’s a very specialised term, Mr Brown. Overtrading, yes. It’s a marketing strategy term. You’re quite correct, no firm in its right mind complains about having too many customers. There’s no such thing as making more profit than we would like. When we use ‘overtrading’, it’s really for consumption by our competitors who might want to object to another of our branches in the same locality. It’s to put the wind up people like the Adlis and Didls of this world. We wanted a second branch in the town for all sorts of good commercial reasons but the so-called overtrading wasn’t one of them. Really, I shouldn’t say this, but ‘overtrading’ actually means nothing. It’s just abstract bullshit to worry the competition.’
‘So how did this all begin? Presumably you don’t analyse every customer’s till receipts or follow them all round the store on camera, individually? What made you pick me out in the first place, or was that completely random?’
‘Oh no, sir. Nothing random about that. No, far from it. You see, we keep a very close watch on the Express Checkout queues. For the very good reason that the people in them are light spenders. Minimal Shoppers. They simply aren’t shopping effectively. Twenty checkouts we’ve got here, hundreds of thousands of product lines, and you Express folk just pop in, get a few things and buzz off. So we have specially trained assistants on those Express tills, trained to watch every shopper closely for particular Key Signs that we consider important. When they see a Key Sign, they report the shopper to me and the observations are put in place.’
‘What Key Sign drew attention to me?’
‘Oh, it was a real give-away. Listen to this, a few months ago when you were paying by credit card.’
He reached across the desk for a mini-disk recorder and pressed the tiny Play button. We heard the following dialogue, the checkout assistant’s voice and mine, clear as a bell.
Assistant: That’s seventeen pounds forty nine, please, sir. Credit card? Thank you. Would you like any cash back?
Me: M-mmm? Cash back?
Assistant: Yes. Would you like some cash back?
Me: Er . . . well . . . I don’t . . . er, what is it?
Assistant: Cash back, sir? Well, when you pay by plastic card, we can give you cash if you need it, just like a bank, and charge it to your card account along with the bill for what you’ve bought. Then you don’t need to make a separate, special trip to the bank. You can do it here. It’s just another of our services to make life easier for our shoppers.
Me: Oh, good heavens. I’d no idea. Er . . . well, no thank you.
Assistant: And do you have your in-store loyalty card, sir?
Me: Er, no, I haven’t. I think I must have left it at home.
Assistant. Oh dear, sir. You do seem to be rather an uninformed shopper (light laugh).
I remembered this conversation because of the expression ‘uninformed shopper’. At the time, I thought she just used it as a handy way of describing my way of going about my shopping. I’d no idea then that it was a Marketing Psychology category that I was in danger of falling into.
‘Well, that was it, Mr Brown. You fell down twice there, sir, not knowing about cash back and not having your loyalty card. Key Signs for closer surveillance reporting. So Beryl – that was Beryl’s voice on the recording, one of our top Key Sign spotters – Beryl reported you to me, I confirmed it with the Branch Manager, surveillance went on and the evidence gradually built up. Somehow we have to save you from yourself and help you to avoid becoming, officially, an Uninformed Shopper.’
‘Would it make any difference if I stood in a queue at the ordinary checkouts, pretending that I was buying more than I was, keeping away from the Express one?’
‘It’s a pity you didn’t think of that a few months ago, sir. It would certainly have taken us much longer to get onto you, if at all. So much depends on the quality of the checkout personnel. Everyone is on the watch for Key Signs but they’re not all as sharp as the Express personnel by any means.’
I’ve had enough of all this by now, but I’m slightly intrigued to find out how far he thinks his power over me and my life extends. Does he have some kind of in-store Shopping Police at his disposal, to hover menacingly at my shoulder as I go round, or force me to go round the aisles again when I approach the checkout without enough items in my basket? Instead of cash back, do they fine you for Minimal Shopping, and charge that to your card account?
‘So where do we go from here? Anywhere? Do you really think I’m going to start behaving differently just because I know you’re watching me?’
‘You’d be surprised how people change once they know someone’s taking an interest in them. Some of them think to themselves: I’ll show that blighter Harrington. Next time I come in I’ll get a trolley instead of a basket and I’ll fill the thing to the top. So much for his clever-clever stuff about patterns of behaviour. Then he’ll stop watching me.’
‘You mean they buy loads of stuff they don’t want just to get back at you?’
‘It’s only one possible approach, sir, but I can assure you it happens. It becomes a little private battle between the two of us.’
‘And, in the process, you sell more and make more, which is exactly what you wanted to achieve in the first place.’
‘Precisely, Mr Brown. Precisely. Though, if I may say so, sir, I wouldn’t expect someone of your calibre to do anything like that. Stage One is what we need in your case, sir. It’s all very gentle. Following our little chat today, Stage One really leaves it to you to think it all over for a while and kind of come to terms, if you can, with the fact that you’re not really doing things properly. We haven’t gone to the trouble of laying out all these products just for someone like you to walk past and ignore. We’d like you to go away now and think about spending a little more time looking a little more closely at much more than you usually do. You may be pleasantly surprised. If you then put a little more in your basket, you’ll spend a little more money. We’ll be here supporting you all the way. Let that process go on for a while and, who knows, you could even find yourself graduating from basket to trolley, and joining the Real Shoppers. That would be fine by me because I certainly wouldn’t expect you to become a Super Shopper. And don’t forget the social dimension. You’d probably bump into one or two people you know, as well, if you would only spend a bit more time in here.’
This is my moment. I can see from the expression on his face that we’ve more or less reached the end of this absurd conversation.
‘You think you’re right at the cutting edge of this purchasing psychology stuff, don’t you? You think my modus operandi is old-fashioned, don’t you? Let me tell you this. When I was going shopping with my mother, to the little old grocery shop where everyone was served individually, over in America they had supermarkets that were using exactly the techniques you’re so proud of today. You marketing people haven’t had a new idea about all this for half a century. Vance Packard – you won’t have heard of him – he reported that researchers into shopping in supermarkets saw women going round with a short list, or no list at all, and yet they still came out with full trolleys. I remember the sentence he quoted exactly: ‘Seven out of ten of today’s purchases are decided in the store, where the shoppers buy on impulse!!!’ I remember it particularly because of the three exclamation marks at the end. You’re not doing anything different from what they were doing in the States, in the nineteen fifties! Before you were even born!’
And, although I couldn’t be bothered to go into it, all the rest was just the same – the hypnotic packaging design, precise positioning of products on the shelves, attracting people to big packets rather than small ones, playing music to them as they went round. It had all been done long before there was a single supermarket up and running in this country.
‘And, to cap it all, you’re pulling another of their old-fashioned tricks – trying to make me feel you’re doing me good, the paternalistic ploy. As though Tescbury’s was enfolding me in its comforting arms to help me feel more secure when what it really wants is to get me to part with as much of my money as it can.’
Harrington is a bit flummoxed by this. He looks genuinely hurt. I’m getting somewhere and he’s got nothing left to throw at me.
‘Well, I’m sorry you see it like that, Mr Brown. I can truly assure you, as I said at the beginning, that it’s your best welfare that we’re most concerned about. We are trying to help.’
‘And what will you do if Stage One doesn’t work?’
‘Oh, it wouldn’t do to think about that yet, sir. If I may say so, one Stage at a time. Knowing about Stage Two would only divert you from completing Stage One successfully. Well, I think that’s about it for now. I expect you’d like to be on your way now, Mr Brown. I don’t think there’s any more we can do at this moment. I’ll just ask someone to pop in and fast-track your basket through the Express Checkout.’
‘Hmmm. Right. Thank you.’
I notice he can hardly bring himself to inspect the pathetic contents of my basket, but he can’t help himself. It’s part of his job. As I move towards the office door, I decide to hit him with something else.
‘Oh, by the way, Mr Harrington. It’s “fewer”, not “less”.’
‘Sorry, sir? ‘
‘On the Express Checkout sign. It should be “10 items or fewer”, not “10 items or less”. Rules of English grammar. The wording on the sign is grammatically wrong.’
‘You may well be right, sir, but that doesn’t actually come into my sphere of responsibility. Things like that are handled by Corporate Communications. Have a word at the Information Desk on your way out, would you? They’ll give you the contact details. By the way, Mr Brown, I wonder if I can interest you in the new low-interest Tescbury’s credit card? Or perhaps one of our latest mobile phones? They carry voice messages and texts - and they take photographs. Tell you the time as well, sir. Or how about -’
But by now his increasingly desperate sales spiel is muffled by the office door, now mercifully closed between us. I follow the junior person who carries my basket to the Express Checkout. One minute later, I’m out.
I go to Adli now for my shopping. They’ve got everything I need and it’s nearly all cheaper than Tescbury’s. I wouldn’t want Simon Harrington to know this, but Adli have a much smaller trolley, in capacity somewhere between Tescbury’s basket and their bigger trolley. It’s easier to use than lugging a basket round with me, and it means I can sometimes buy larger quantities of things, with even more of a saving. What’s more, the wording on their Express Checkout sign is faultless: “Maximum 10 items”, though I usually go to the main checkouts these days. And there’s something else I wouldn’t want Mr. Harrington to know. Every time I go to Adli, I set myself a little challenge. I make a list with only three or four items on it and then go round the aisles forcing myself to look at the products more closely and think about the other things I may want. It’s quite stimulating and adds an enjoyable bit of mystery and tension to an otherwise very dull experience. When I reach the checkout and look in my trolley, I’m often quite amazed to see how many things I hadn’t realised I needed. Sometimes I even run into one or two of my friends in there.