How many bags have you brought?

Alec and I discussed store cards on the way back from Sainsbury’s. He quoted a stand-up who asked his audience: “Who here’s against ID cards?” [Cheer.]
“Who here owns a supermarket club card?” [Faltering cheer.]
His point being that they amount to the same thing.
“I never agree to complete surveys,” said Alec. “At the end of the day I think – why should I do work for free for Sainsbury’s?”
["But the points, the points, what about the points?" wailed a little voice in my head.]

It was on my next trip that it struck me how much social commentary a store such as Sainsbury’s can offer. At the checkout I was behind an elderly lady. She got my attention and pointed out how lovely the pot plant she was buying was. “Mmm, lovely,” I agreed.
“I’ll get five or six plants from that,” she told me, confidently. I had the impression of being let into a conspiracy.
“How will you do that?” I asked.
“I’ll cut ’em, and I’ll put ’em back to back and wait for ’em to get whiskers, like. . . “
“Oh yes. . . “
“Then I’ll put ’em in soil.”
I was impressed.
By this time it was the turn of the elderly lady to check out her shopping. She was being asked by the checkout assistant if she’d brought her own bags. There was an element of resentment in the elderly lady’s response to this question which made the assistant explain: “I’m not being nosy, I have to ask.” She said this friendlily and it sounded like an explanation. But when I thought about it, it wasn’t an explanation. It wasn’t even a reassurance that the question was not a nosy one. She as a checkout assistant was not being nosy, no. But Sainsbury’s was being nosy. It was for their marketing data again. And could this be of any use to the shopper? If they find that enough people don’t bother to bring their own bags will they drop the incentives to do this and soften up the greenly greenly approach?

The checkout assistant didn’t seem to notice the umbrage and carried on grinning. She commented on the elderly lady’s pot plant. And so the elderly lady repeated her explanation on how to get more plants for your money, “Put em back to back . . . they like it back to back . . . ”

Alec told me he has a friend who’d been buying cat food for over 10 years when he received a letter from Tesco expressing concern for his aging cat: did he want to take out Tesco pet insurance?

Supermarkets can be nosy places.