On being unhelpful
It was bound to happen sooner or later.
I visited the supermarket in Skobieville on Saturday.
That act in itself was quite remarkable as it is the first time I have stepped across its threshold in around ten years. I hate shopping and in particular I hate supermarkets, which is why I get all my groceries delivered. Naturally they had changed everything around so I couldn’t find anything, and would have walked out only that the item I wanted wasn’t on the delivery list.
Anyhows, having worked myself up into a nice head of steam, and having at last found what I was looking for, the thought crossed my mind to get a couple of extra packs of baccy. I searched for, and eventually found where they had secreted the tobacco area.
I asked the girl behind the counter if they sold Condor. She pulled open a very large drawer and there, sure enough, were dozens of packs of pipe and ciggy baccy. Normally at this point I would quickly scan the drawer and point to the distinctive green packs, as I like to be helpful. But this time I was stumped. All the packs looked exactly the same as they have all gone over to the latest in medical porn and lurid messaging. Short of climbing over the counter and looking for the Condor myself, I was at the mercy of the girl. She maintained they didn’t have any, and I couldn’t argue.
So I asked if she was sure. She said she was. There was nothing I could do except take her word for it and walk away.
This new packaging is supposed to “help” me quit smoking. It is supposed to frighten me with its daft messages and irrelevant images. It supposed to make me want to quit.
Did it succeed?
Of course it didn’t.
All it did was frustrate me in my quest, and raise my blood pressure [very healthy?]. The shop probably lost a bit of extra income and I was put to the inconvenience of shopping elsewhere. It certainly didn’t improve relations between myself and the girl behind the counter.
What it did do was make me all the more determined not to quit.
So stick that in your pipe Tobacco Control, and smoke it.
As happened to me it’s even more frustrating when you get home and find you’ve been given the wrong stuff altogether! Amber Leaf instead of Golden V Tesco’s last week.
Always check, else the fekkers ‘ll get ya!
PS, belated happy birthday to the boss 🙂
Just what is all this supposed to achieve? It only confuses shopkeepers and customers and is no incentive whatsoever to quite smoking [as I said, in my case just the opposite]. It’s as mindless and senseless as pulling the wings off flies, just because they can.
P.S. Belated birthday wishes passed on. I think she has sobered up enough to appreciate it.
I get a feeling of dread in the pit of my stomach when there is a new face behind the baccy counter, poor sods have no idea where all the brands are secreted behing the orange shutters!
Don’t you think if plain packaging was such an effective tool, they should bin the shutters and reveal the medi-porn in all its gory glory?
But of course that would be too sensible for any politician to give a moments reflection to.
It still baffles me why they insist on plain packaging when the packets are hidden anyway. It’s just piling mindlessness on top of lunacy.
“What it did do was make me all the more determined not to quit.”
Intended consequence, no? Keep smokers miserable (or rather, making them even more so) but also keep them smoking, so the jobs of the ANTZ are safe?
Nah, can’t be it. It must be about health. And The Children™, of course.
The med-porn is on full display here in Germany – another intended consequence? Make everybody miserable (and sick via nocebo) and make the non-smokers even more disgusted – by the smokers, of course, not the disgusting people who put the med-porn on the packs. Only thing I don’t quite get with the med-porn on display is how the ANTZ are not run over by a pitchfork swinging mob of “The Children™”-party – why’s no one kicking up a racket about the poor little dears having to stare at med-porn at every supermarket at the cash register?
It won’t be long before the D-ANTZ bring in a law that supermarkets must use those dispensers for tobacco goods that so many of them have at the tills these days already…with nocebos and plain wording of course.
The Kinderschutzzug (the ‘Child Protection Train’) just keeps on a rollin’
Which is particularly nonsensical in Germany as the Germans managed to sink youth smoking rates by Loads% without most of the measures other countries imposed.
As I’ve said before, no doubt, I weep for my Granddaughters who will never know the joy or excitement of being sent to the cig machine on every street, clutching 4 marks in their tiny hands…” ein grosses Maedchen (a Big Girl)” trusted to get Dad’s fags for him.
Totally agree…this is one of the things that rises my BP too.
I saw the pouches with the huge medical porn on them in a supermarket a month or so ago and I was like…how the f*ck am I supposed to buy this shit? Instead of the producer being able to design the packet and inform the customer on its content (like the type of tobacco, where it’s from, aromas etc) – as it’s the case with every other fmcg -, all the buyer gets to see is a woman spitting blood in a handkerchief. How is this BS even legal?
Messed up the link. sorry! http://www.daghettotymz.com/current/truth/truth.html
Damn but that’s a very tricky site to read! I know I go on about spelling the odd time but what the fuck are all the “z”s about?
Aye, no argument for me! The ‘z’ thing is ? Well, you got me there too! Wading through the info about the sugar was interesting though, eventually! Point is there’s sugar in cigs and tobacco and the b@st@rds aren’t being open about it – no change there! I’m wondering how that affects diabetics who smoke?
All I can say is that my blood sugar level is absolutely fine, so a lifetime of smoking pipe tobacco doesn’t seem to have affected it?
It was experiencing similar situations to this that moved me towards making Dr Pat Irish Mixture my regular smoke because it comes in a round tin. All the other tobaccos come in packs so when they open the draw the Dr sticks out like dogs balls. If the gods in their own mind at TC have achieved anything with me it is to stop me giving money to Scandinavian Tobacco (Erinmore) and give it to Imperial Tobacco instead.
Quit? NEVER!
Unfortunately I don’t even need to google to be sure that there are already moves afoot to standardise the packaging container of all tobaccos. And GIVING AWAY A FREE TIN is tantamount to forcing children to smoke- worse still a round tin is PROVEN to be more attractive to toddlers then a square one. FACT! There are whole Kindergarten classes who spend their days not watching APPROVED tv progs but wire wooling those tins clean and then painting them….their little fingers exposed to all the residue nicotine and paint chemicals.
They did give away free tins here in Ireland for a while. I hope it caused a few heart attacks in TC. They were certainly royally pissed!