The World Gets Dumber by the Day - Morrisons Supermarkets to the Fore

We dropped into Morrisons, Shrewsbury, on the way home from our son’s tennis to buy some Calpol for our one year old Selene who’s showing a little poorly tonight.

My wife, thirty three year old Shane originally from the Philippines, went in and bought the things she needed, going through self check-out.  The assistant was called by the machine and would not allow her to go through as, in her opinion, she looked as if she might be under sixteen!

Shane showed all her bank cards and things that might suggest she was over sixteen, explaining about one year old Selene being ill, and other children being in the car, but the assistant would not budge.  Having no other ID, an exasperated Shane came out to the car and asked me to go in and sort it out, which I then attempted to do.

I am sixty five years of age and so being asked to show my age or ID would, I presumed be unlikely.  I had plenty of I.D. with me, in case!  I was also carrying the poorly Selene with me to show that the purchase was genuinely for a baby.  Our two sons came with me too.

Morrisons were still not willing to sell me the Calpol!!!

The reason given by the Manager Stacey was that I might be buying it for my wife, who might be under sixteen.

Unable to comprehend anything so stupid, we left all our shopping at Morrisons and went to Sainsburys who immediately accepted Shane’s reason that she needed the medicine for a sick baby and had no ID on her, if they were bothered.  They weren’t bothered seeing that Shane was obviously a little bit more than sixteen, having an eight year old son Sean who was with her – both at Morrisons and at Sainsburys.  How many sixteen year olds have eight year old children? That’s a question which should be included in Morrison future staff training courses.

Morrisons, regardless of the folly of the assistant in mistaking Shane’s age by twenty years, please talk to your staff about this next scenario.   If a sixty five year old parent with ID carrying a sick baby wants to buy some Calpol, I suggest you supply it.  I informed the staff that I was not impressed with their dogmatic ideology.  I was told their usual manager was away on holiday and they were only doing their jobs as instructed.  Morrisons, wake up!  You look ridiculous.  You are ridiculous.  May I suggest the company reviews how things are handled in future and that a parent carrying ID of pensionable age, is permitted to buy medicines for a sick child who is present at the time of purchase, and that mothers with eight year old children are no longer to be assessed as possibly being under sixteen years of age.

Either that or just close your supermarkets.  It would not waste so much of peoples’ time dealing with such incomprehensible nonsense.  If this is the way Morrisons want their customer relationships to go, then count us out please.  Let’s hope common sense returns when the manager (pictured above) finally gets back from Acapulco.