Cigs

Have you noticed how many people smoke? Counting myself as one of that number, there are still lots of people who do. You can tell that it is still a profitable enterprise because the supermarkets still staff a counter that sells the damn things. If it wasn’t worth a carrot, and I’m not talking about the value of the individual packets, I mean the value of the sales to the business, then you would be reduced to taking them from the shelf yourself, same as your tins of beans etc.
Well seeing as how the likes of Tesco and Sainsbury’s et al do go to the huge expense of paying one of their highly intelligent members of staff to dance attendance on your, almost, every whim you would think that they would have one the extra yard and included some product knowledge training.
I cannot think of the last time I went into a supermarket, asked for the brand of cigarettes that I usually smoke and the body behind the counter knew any of the following
How many cigs are contained in the different types of packet i.e. 10 or 20.
Multiples of packets i.e. 40, 60, 100 etc.
Which brand is which.
Which is left, and which is right.
Here is an example, it’s actually what prompted me to write this.
“20 Mayfair, please.”
After several seconds doing the Quasimodo shuffle along the display, Assif selects Benson and hedges and whizzes them across the scanner.
“No, not Benson and Hedges, Mayfair, the blue ones, on the right hand side.”
So now he goes through the whole rigmarole of un-scanning the B&H then it’s back to the Quasimodo shuffle.
Second time lucky, almost.
What I end up with are Mayfair Lights. Probably the same thing in a different coloured box but still not what I asked for.
Now if you think this sounds a bit picky, think of it this way; if you went into a shoe shop and asked for a particular style in a size nine and they gave you a size eight you wouldn’t accept them, would you?