I met my friend Rachel this evening who was accompanied by a girl called Jo. It turned out that Jo works for Sainsbury’s and it’s her job to stock new stores when they open. She’s just opened a new Sainsbury’s store in Tonbridge, which is where my brother lives. It occurred to me that she can influence what appears in the individual stores and so I asked her if she could get something specific in for my brother, so he could go into the shop and know that it’s only there for him? She confirmed that this was possible.
This is power. This is the sort of power that Kim Jong-Il, North Koreas mental leader, could only dream about in his most crazed delusional moments. I bet he can’t influence what’s in his local shop. Well he can actually, there’s nothing in North Korean shops and that’s entirely down to him, but I bet if a Sainsbury’s did open in North Korea he wouldn’t be allowed to dictate what was in it. Therefore I am more powerful, or rather my brother is, than Kim Jong-Il.
I rang Steve, my bro, and told him this exciting news, and informed him he could pick anything he wanted that isn’t currently in the Tonbridge Sainsbury’s and my contacts and connections could sort it. He is lucky to have a brother like me. He was justifiably excited about this, and told me he’d have to have a think about it and call me back.
I was a bit concerned at this point that he’d ring back and say “a scud missile� or “a unicorn� because that would probably be beyond even someone as well connected as me but thankfully when he did call back his request was for “barbeque steak sauce.�
Apparently the Tonbridge branch of Sainsbury’s doesn’t have any of this and he knows this fact because he was looking for some barbeque steak sauce in there only recently and was annoyed to not be able to find any. Jo promised it would be in the next delivery. So there we go, not only has he been able to influence what’s in his local supermarket, he’s actually been able to rectify something that was annoying him, and so I think we proved him with a pretty good service.
Hopefully he’ll be able to impress his friends or the ladies with the fact that he snaps his fingers and barbeque steak sauce appears in his local shop. Perhaps he’ll engineer a situation whereby he says to one of his friends “fancy a steak later? I’ll just nip to Sainsbury’s and get some barbeque sauce for it.� And his friend will say “Have you gone mad, as mad as Kim Jong-Il? You know that there’s no barbeque steak sauce in our local Sainsbury’s, everyone knows that.� And he’ll say “I’ll think you’ll find there is. They got some in for me.�
This is also a service to you. If you fancy a nice bit of steak, perhaps with a barbeque flavour to it, but you’re thinking “I’d love that to happen, but my only concern is I don’t know where I can get any barbeque sauce� then rest easy, the Tonbridge branch of Sainsbury’s should be your first call.
My dream is to meet the person who’s in charge of stocking Spar shops. Then I’d be able to directly influence what’s in my local Spar and turn it into my own shopping paradise. I’d ask for Cravendale milk and a good selection of Tiki cocktails. Oh who am I kidding? I couldn’t improve my local Spar shop if I tried. It’s perfect in every way.
Maybe it doesn’t appear perfect to others, very much like a new born baby isn’t as attractive to others as it is to the parents. The Spar shop is my very own, it is my local convenience store, and in my eyes it can never do any wrong.
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