My first Saturday working at Tesco.

Yesterday was the first Saturday that the new Tesco store in Beeston was open to the public and boy was it busy! Very busy!

I arrived at work at 6am and was on my meat counter at 6.10am ready for action, albeit a bit sleepy. It was my responsibility to set out the meat counter for this day’s trading and this meant creating an attractive display to Tesco’s high standards using my knowledge from the excellent training we have all received three weeks prior to opening coupled with a good visual sense and fifteen years of butchery skills from working in the meat trade in the 1970s and 1980s.

As well as setting out the display and prepping up things like the minced steak and casserole steak pieces I was also engaged in creating attractive racks of lamb and decorating them with little paper hats and stringing up boneless loins of pork to cut up into lean little joints for sale. To make the three unit meat display look good there were approximately thirty separate sections to create and replenish ready for service at 8am.

Phil and Alan

Alongside of me was my mate Paul – the fishmonger – creating his own beautiful display of fresh fish and seafood on a sparkling bed of ice with help from our manager Natasha. All of the counters displays had to be ultra nice this Saturday as some major managers were visiting the store and the all the preparation areas had to be shown as sparkling clean at the end of our preparations. No pressure then!

Paul on his excellent fish counter.

Before my first break I had to visit the big industrial chiller room at the back of the store to replenish the counter fridges and make sure that I didn’t run out of things like Willow Farm fresh chickens that are on offer at only £2.50 and were flying out, sometimes being bought four at a time. When I opened the chiller room door the space had recently had a huge delivery and it took me quite a while to find anything connected to the counters area. The act of searching around the storage trays then made me perceive myself to be well behind with my work and chasing my tail, so to speak.

rack of lamb

Time working on the counters goes amazingly quickly and although I didn’t get a break until 10.50am I was astonished to discover that nearly four hours had flown by. My colleague Alan appeared on the meat counter about 10.30am to find me whizzing around serving customers and trying to replenish the counters and clean up at the same time. It was like the proverbial cavalry had arrived and I was very pleased to see him putting on his white coat, apron and paper hat. All through this process our manager Natasha and team leader Rebecca were there supporting us and guiding us with solid advice and encouragement as well as physically helping out when needed. You could describe the day as being a foodie baptism of fire. :0)



I had my break and then came back down to the shop floor to continue a very busy working day grafting alongside Alan and operating as a real two man team. Alan is a lovely bloke and has over thirty years experience in the meat trade having run his own business with his late father in Chilwell.

Those fresh chickens on offer were hardly out on the chiller, onto the counter and into the customers’ hands before you could turn around and repeat the process again and again. Alan and I agreed that all of Beeston and Broxtowe Borough Council would be having chicken for tea last night! Oh and half price sausages!

I worked until 4.30pm and we were constantly busy on the meat counter as were our counterparts Paul and Martin on the Fish counter. I hardly had a chance to notice what was happening on the deli and cooked chickens counters. I guess they were equally as busy.


Only once, when the mincing machine decided to chew up the steak pieces to mince, did I feel tense. This was more out of frustration at myself for not getting the machine parts assembly correctly alligned. The rest of the time I felt very energised and loved serving the customers and being knowledgeable and pleasant for them. I also enjoyed being there for Alan and supporting him by doing some prep after my official finishing time of 4pm and making sure he wasn’t left with a mess to clear up.

Confucius once said that: A man who is passionate about his job never has to work another day in his life. I think that I am one of the lucky ones who is in such a position. As I write this it is now Sunday and I may be tired and aching, but I am ‘appy.