The Tesco years: my love affair with a supermarket

http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2015/may/03/why-i-love-tesco

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How do I love thee, Tesco? Let me count the ways. Let me count them in crumpets, in breadth of breads, in discount daffodils and spilt Yakult. There aren’t many multinationals I feel this much affection for. Certainly not many whose scandals include but are not limited to an investigation by the Serious Fraud Office, closure of its headquarters, £5bn deficit in its pension scheme, and haemorrhaging of customers to cheaper supermarkets. Not many that are accused of bullying suppliers, or that have suffered the sixth biggest corporate loss in British history. Not many that my mum boycotted in the Shirley Porter Thatcher days or that keeps its “concept” coffee shops by the nappies. Certainly not many that smell of Friday-night milk and the sweat of the furious.

Perhaps I’m reading the room wrong here, but doesn’t part of you love Tesco, too? No? Don’t you feel #feelings when you read of its decline? I know we all say we prefer the independent grocer, the artisanal deli with its interesting cheeses. I know we all “despaired” over the Tesco Metros that appeared like cold sores on our ailing high streets, in the holes that a nice florist or library could have filled. But wasn’t part of you silently celebrating, the part that lives in your shiver, at the ease with which you would soon be able to buy a lasagne at midnight, a box of shell chocolates before work? The ease. The affordability. The speed and anonymity, and place to stand when it’s raining. And don’t we, really, don’t we get the supermarkets we deserve?

Mainly I love Tesco for being a small place where big things happen. A homely no-man’s land where all bets are off. Standing in front of the Meals for One, we are all one. A Tesco store is a green screen – any story can be projected on to its cast. There are the students, eyeing each other with sex, the sex of people buying their first kilo of spaghetti. There are the late-night alcoholics and early-morning energy drinkers. There are the couples, reading a recipe from a phone as they curate an aspirational dinner for eight, alive in a way only possible on a battery with less than 20% charge. The office parties buying six-packs of beer to take to a BYOB Indian restaurant where, around 9pm, one of them will begin their sad descent into redundancy.

I have cried in at least one Tesco, but I have laughed in all of them. At this particular age (births/jobs/deaths/suburbs), we don’t have much time, it seems, my friends and I, to just hang around and chat on, say, chairs. In our 30s, a shared supermarket shop is the closest thing to cocktail hour we’re going to get, so we make the most of the air-conditioned space between the loaves. It was at Tesco that an old colleague had an emotional breakthrough about her relationship with her father. It was at a Tesco bagging area that I overheard a guy tell his boyfriend he “wanted to sleep with other people”. It was at Tesco I told one of my best friends I was pregnant. How many therapists would go out of business, I wonder, if Tesco had couches?

Sure, there’s a certain glamour to a Lidl. There’s the surprise element, the knowledge that a whole serrano ham could be waiting at the next corner, next to the lawn aerator sandals and weeping cashier. Sure, a trip to Aldi makes you feel strong and vital, in the same way that your body responds with a rush of adrenaline when a bouncer headbutts you for returning to the club for your coat. But whatever “sales” say, neither of these wannabes is a true contender for Tesco’s crown. Like its tuna pasta salad that fizzes on your tongue, Tesco is awful, but I love it.

The dream, of course, is a supermarket that doesn’t make us feel dirty; that gives staff a living wage and suppliers a sustainable business, one everybody can afford to shop at. Until then, though, I will continue to Tesco, as a verb. And continue, too, the longest, most dysfunctional love affair of my life.

Email Eva at e.wiseman@observer.co.uk. Follow Eva on Twitter @EvaWiseman

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