Once the pandemic struck back in March of last year, supermarkets were overwhelmed with lunatics stocking up on toilet paper, flour, beer, condoms and everything else that on a usual Friday night, we take for granted. Soon after, the usual online weekly shop became impossible. Queues of over an hour before you discover that there are no delivery slots available for the next 3 weeks and if you were lucky enough to see one of these precious slots, your computer would crash. First metaphorically speaking and then literally through the window.
Once things calmed down and the supermarkets had hired more drivers and bought more vans, there were numerous shortages of things people do not normally buy. Every mum in Britain suddenly wanted to make bread. My much loved bread machine was forced to take have a rest after 3 years of constant use.
Eventually, stocks had returned to our stores and the weekly shop became relatively normal. During this difficult period, Asda appeared to be the easiest supermarket to get a delivery slot with and each week was an anger inducing game of "guess the substitution".
Now what I found to be unique and particularly special about Asda was that they did not think you bought your food based upon a quantity but instead, upon what it cost.
For example, you do not buy 4 pints of milk, you buy £1.09 of milk.
So when it came to their substitutions, anger was inevitable. Here are some examples from the recent 6 months as they will not let me look at older ones (I learned some formatting!)
| Item Ordered | Item Substituted | Anger Induced (Out of 5) |
|---|---|---|
| ASDA Diet Cola 2l * 2 | Pepsi Max 1.25l * 1 | 😡😡😡😡 |
| McCoy's Mighty Meaty Ridge Cut Multipack Crisps 6x25g | Walkers Max Double Crunch Variety Crisps 6 Pack 6x27g | 😡😡 |
| ASDA Farm Stores Mixed Peppers (Colour may vary) 3pk | ASDA GS Red Pepper EACH * 1 | 😡😡😡😡 |
| George Home Black Boxed Frame 8 x 6Inch 8x6in * 2 | George Home Black Boxed Frame 7 x 5Inch 7x5in * 3 | 🤬🤬🤬🤬🤬🤬🤬🤬🤬🤬 |
| 4pt ASDA Whole Milk * 2 | Cravendale Whole Milk 1l * 1 | 🤬🤬🤬🤬🤬🤬🤬🤬 |
These are the few examples from my most recent orders after things had improved considerably.
The milk has already been mentioned and I would like to draw your attention to row 4. If this is not clear, I had 2 * 8" x 6" school photographs that I wanted to frame. These frames were substituted with 3 * 7" x 5" frames. Some fuckwit in Asda thought that I would happily cut an inch off the edges of my children's school photos and create a 3rd photograph that would sit happily on our mantelpiece alongside the other 2.
Image 1 - https://pixahive.com/photo/school-life/
Image 2 - https://www.flickr.com/photos/oddharmonic/990223166/
I shop at Sainsbury's now.