New stories about the crazy people who shop and work in supermarkets.

 

Just when you think there are no more stories of crazy customers or even crazier shop workers, as illustrated in my book Supermarket Creatures, along, from the depths of my memories, trot a few more to amuse or shock you. These are quite random but here goes:

I remember the type of person working behind the counters who had very little regard for the fact that Supermarkets were there to make a profit so they would come up with the getaway clause "Well that's what the customer asked for and the customer is ALWAYS right." These types would trim the fat off the  the edge of the sirloin steaks and not charge the customer, likewise with cutting out the fat from the ribeye steaks because the customer asked them too. Again they didn't charge the customer for the fat.

Rib eye steaks

I even saw and most definitely heard one of the women on our meat counter hacking a length of oxtail to death with a cleaver because the customer wanted smaller bits of oxtail. The bone is solid except in the joints and almost impossible to chop through. The customer' would also say that the 'other butcher' did it for them the last time and would stand there tut tutting impatiently, with their arms folded in across their chest whilst the shop worker went red in the face and weak in the arms and wrists hacking away at the oxtail.

One day I came back from a break to find the small metal tray on the fish counter, that had previously contained loose scallops, mostly with the orange roe attached, just full of orange roe bits. The person who was on the fish counter whilst I went for my break had sold a dozen or so scallops to a customer who had asked for the roe to taken off because they only wanted the white scallops and her dog didn't like the orange bits.

Scallops with roe

Amongst many twatish requests from customers I recall a man who asked if the raw prawns were de-veined. They were all done prior to being frozen and packaged and distributed to the supermarkets. So, I told him they were definitely de-veined. He didn't believe me and went on and on about it and what a lazy liar I was for at least ten minutes but it seemed like forever. 

We had a very nice pre-made fish pie mix on the fish counters which included some white fish, some salmon and some smoked. The fish types were fairly distributed in the mix but you would always get some idiot who didn't like the look of the smoked fish and wanted you to cut up some from the smoked section and replace it. Then they chose not to buy it or purchased some and then dumped it. By the way, taking fish from other parts of the fish counter wasn't right because it was all costed out per individual fish type. Again, there would always be some errant member of staff who would bend the rules for a customer because they didn't want any bother from them. Of course once one person does this it then sets a precedent for the customer to return wanted the same special treatment week after week. The same applies to those awkward to serve customers who wanted you to chop the pointy ends of the fish fillets simply because they didn't look neat, or as one 'knowledgeable' customer said "The pointy ends don't taste the same as the rest of the fillet.

The same customers would ask why the haddock loins looked a darker colour than the fluffy white cod loins or why there was a red or black mark on them. The latter dumb question was in relation to the blood line where the fish skeleton would have been. Many of them though you as the proud fishmonger was trying to flog them something that was infected or going off. This was especially so if they'd watched a scary food programme on the television the night before.

I have mentioned this in the book but the one aspect I really didn't like was when Tesco had a half price special offer on Whole Salmon. This is what our fridge looked when rammed with whole salmon boxes and other fresh fish items. Well, actually it be much worse than this. You could seriously call it rammed to the gills. The cream coloured plastic trays weren't the best for holding any fish when the edges of the trays started to break and it was a disaster waiting to happen if you tried to fill up any of these trays with whole salmon overnight.

When we had swordfish loins on offer or on display a young man would buy as much as we had which often equated to another £50's worth. I must admit we had a our suspicions that he might be trying to steal the expensive swordfish so a few times we had him followed by security. But every time he paid for it! I wonder to this day what he did with all that swordfish. He was nice enough to serve unlike the man I often had the displeasure of serving who would make you go through all the tiny sprats and sort out the bigger (fresher) ones for him. Then he'd want them gutting and filleting.

There was another idiot customer who I have described in the book as Wally Wildebeest. This huge obnoxious man often came over to our fish counter. Not to buy anything but to plunge him beefy right hand into the ice and hold it there for a few minutes. "Look at that!" he'd proudly say "Look at that! I have the perfect circulation. I don't even feel the cold. That's because I go swimming everyday!" 

One of the young students who appeared in academic holiday times was completely rubbish at any of the display and preparation jobs across the deli, meat and fish counters. He falsely claimed he'd passed all of the Tesco food qualifications to the top level. Yet, he'd make a right hash of things, especially on the meat and fish, the whole salmon being the worst example. I would feel embarrassed that such mangled products were sold on our counters. If any member of staff said anything, he'd look affronted and  argue "Well that's how we were taught to do it in Coventry." The rest of the time he would rapid mumble and rabbit on about his brilliant sword fencing skills and highly educated numeracy skills. I used to dread him coming on to our counters.

I hope to bring you many more stories like these and if you wish to delight yourself with even more Tesco blunders and wonders from across UK then do order my book Supermarket Creatures. Available on Amazon as Kindle and Paperback.

Phil Lowe.

Supermarket Creatures: a brand new 'laugh out loud' book from Phil Lowe.

Sorry there have been no posts since October 2020. I have been very busy writing and editing my brand new book Supermarket Creatures which was launched last week on Amazon. I am very excited about this latest project which has already been getting glowing 5* reviews on Amazon. Here is the back page blurb to give you a flavour of what Supermarket Creatures is all about. It is available as a Kindle e-book or as a paperback. Place your orders HERE.

Humour, food and theatre writer, Phil Lowe, takes us on a dizzying tour of what it can be like to work in a British supermarket and, more specifically, behind the meat, fish, hot food and delicatessen counters. Complete with real-life stories from ex butcher Phil and many other former Tesco Extra Counters’ employees from around the UK, Supermarket Creatures will guarantee anyone who has ever shopped in or worked at a major supermarket, a bulging trolley full of laughs. The book includes more than a few juicy retail revelations and some funny and no-nonsense tales about the fresh food supermarket world. You can expect to find anecdotes about the habits of annoying customers; the silly things they do and say; shocking stories of supermarket theft; and expertly detailed descriptions of the day-to-day work on the counters. Phil’s fascinating Tesco related food blogposts, include and reveal, how he became the Tesco butcher in their television advert. Phil Lowe cleverly brings in his love of theatre and irrepressible wit to make Supermarket Creatures a unique set of human and relatable stories. Many of the supermarket counters may be gone now but they live on in this highly readable book.

A simple home-made chicken soup.

Home made chicken soup. Into a large tureen I put the cooked chicken bones of a previously roasted chicken with some cold water and I introduced a couple of bay leaves then boiled the carcass for three quarters of an hour. I sieved the liquid via a colander into a smaller saucepan and the cooked bits of meat were removed (picked off) once it had cooled. To the liquid and added the scraps of chicken and added more cooked chicken from the original carcass. I chopped some spring onions, shredded a small piece of ginger and three cloves of garlic. Earlier on I had put some frozen sweetcorn in a bowl of cold water to defrost. Once it had defrosted I added the sweet corn and a finely chopped chilli pepper. Now I seasoned the soup with plenty of salt and pepper and warmed it through. Delicious. I liked this so much I had two bowls!

Spanish Pintxo. What are Spanish Pintxos?

 If you love tapas then you will love these two videos made before lockdown about Pintxos in San Sebastian by our foodie friends James and Yolanda of Spain Revealed on YouTube.

Also if you love Spain, then do as we do. and subscribe to their Spain Revealed Community Facebook Page to get regular updates. So about those Pintxos. Venga. Let's go.

Ruddington Village Market. Adventures with smoked fish from Smith's Smokery of Linconshire.

 The Ruddington Village Market happens once a month at the beginning of the month and last weekend I had a mooch round and ended up buying some smoked fish items from a very pleasant guy running the Smith's Smokery Smoked Fish stall. He had come to our village all the way from Skegness and was doing a great trade. I purchased a whole smoked eel and a pack of two smoked salmon pieces that were close to their use by date of 9th Sept and on sale for a bargain £4 for the two. The eel cost me a fiver.

I filleted and skinned the Wild Smoked Eel and made myself a smoked eel salad on the day of purchase. Delicious.

The smoked salmon was refrigerated until the 8th when I decided to make a salmon and leek shortcut pastry pie. I did it all in stages by poaching the salmon and steaming the two big leaks. I made a pastry base and coddled together lid from a shop bought ready made pastry. The mushrooms were chopped up and gently fried  in butter. To add some more flavours I raided my cupboard for a few salty capers and opened a small tin of anchovies. These were all quite random 'I wonder what would go nice with it?' additions and to finish I sliced a tomato and added a home made cheese sauce. 

With the pastry lid in place and the sides trimmed I popped the pie in a pre-heated oven at gas mark 6 for an hour. I don't know if I put too much cheese sauce in but when i checked to cooked about 30 minutes in there was some spillage. I whipped the pie out and transferred to pie dish into a low ceramic dish and washed the oven tray once cooled. I gave some of the finished pie to my elderly neighbour Betty and ate a good slice of mine with some new potatoes. 

The next day I pigged out on the reheated remainder of the pie with some steamed and buttered asparagus. I can't wait to see what tempts me at the Ruddington Village Market in early October.

 

Garden overhaul that only cost time and effort. Goodbye lavender bushes. Hello clean space.

 I do love lavender and I did love my lavender bushes in the back garden. Unfortunately they had been in situ for around eight years (if not more) and had got very woody and the weeds underneath them and around them were proving hard to control. 

So, on August 12th and 13th (hot days) I set about chopping down and pulling up all five lavender bushes, I gathered in the the flower heads to keep and dry them but, other  than that,  the whole lot went into the green rubbish bin. I saved the woody branches separately with the idea of storing them and using them for kindling one fine and sunny day when I might have a barbeque. As Autumn approaches I think that plan may not come into fruition. 

The next stage was to uproot the actual roots (just visible in the picture below) and then take all the stones off by spade work and depositing them on some plastic bags at the side of the perimeter. I did all this quite back breaking work in the hot sunshine and then got on my hands and knees pulling up as much of the weeds and weed roots as I could find. I had no new membrane to put on top of the old black membrane but I utilised two old cloth throws that were about the dimensions of a king size bed and the luckily the area within the bricks.

All the stones got a rigorous sieving to get all the little bits of soil and lavender wood from them. Then, sieve by sieve full. I put them on top of the throws I had tucked into the space. This took quite a long while. I was sweating buckets by the time the last sieve full got chucked into place. I left it as it was for that evening and the following day I returned to the garden. I pushed the stones around to do my best to get the throws completely covered around the edges to prevent weeds returning (they still came back!) and finished off the new design with my ceramic balls. The chair was loaned from a neighbour.

Love shopping or just mooching around supermarkets on holidays abroad? Check this out.

 I love mooching around foreign supermarkets to see how different they are laid out and what their cultural offerings are. For example one time when I went to Bordeaux I stood for ages at the dried herbs section just reading all the names in French of herbs and spices and was amazed that their fish counter and the different display methods to when I worked at Tesco. Then there was whole chiller sections dedicated to duck and goose products! I also love cured meats and get very excited when I see much bigger offerings from what I might see at home in the UK. Such was the case when I went to Leiden in Holland.

As I mentioned in the last blog post I have recently come across #SpainRevealed on YouTube which is curated by James Blick and Yolanda Martin, a very enthusiastic couple based in Madrid. This video below in which they visit a big Spanish supermarket is eye opening and I learnt so much about the way the Spanish shop at supermarkets and what appeals to them. I have a friend who lives and teaches English in Barcelona and she told me that such supermarkets are often on the outskirts of the big cities and you really need a car to shop there. When I saw the Iberico hams on display in the Spanish supermarket I was in cured meats heaven. Do check it out.