Supermarket Hate

I am getting  increasingly to hate supermarket shopping. The one advantage they have over a village shop is Choice. But now the Choice had become an exercise in arithmetical calculation. I want a chicken. Just a chicken. But I have to compare price per kilo, or price per item, free range or not, place or origin, type of feed and probably more that my confused brain can't recall.

The same goes for the vulgar sounding Bogoffs. I may only want some tomatoes but now I have to wrestle with brain, and conscience, over whether I really need two lots for the price of one because it's an amazing bargain regardless of the fact I may have to throw half away because they'll be bad before I finish them. And no, I don't want to spend a day making tomato jam. Or would I like 3 for the price of two and have some peaches maybe, and some other item thrown in, although I was trying to stick to my menu and my shopping list.

The whole thing is getting horrendous and I don't believe it saves money because the choice thing means you see more stuff to buy you hadn't even thought of buying. And if it is terribly cheap, then who is losing out? Certainly not the supermarket, so some poor producer somewhere. Which is another problem for my conscience.

I was around when the first supermarkets arrived. Our local was a George Mason, and it was seven miles away. Before then my mother phoned her weekly grocery list to my Auntie Jean who brought the shopping in her van, the milk was delivered daily, the butcher was a mile's walk away or he delivered, and there was a village shop for other items. It was service. Now I wonder who is serving whose interests.