'Every little helps' - so they say!

Now that I'm well and truly lodged in my 'Grumpy Old Man' mode, I'll tell the tale of my this morning's visit to Tesco, that self styled paragon of retail shopping, the giant which likes to have people believe they're on the customers' side.

We have their loyalty card, but since most of our shopping there is for petrol, we don't accumulate much. We find their prices are much higher than another supermarket chain and since the latter is more convenient of access and they carry all we need, we use them.

This is immaterial, really, since we use Tesco for our convenience, and they had sent us a voucher to the value of points earned, ie £7.50. By agreement, this is as good as money between Tesco and us, exchangeable for goods at their store.

So I visited there this morning because they give out free yeast, fresh baker's yeast, that is. I want to bake some bread, d'you see, and have almost run out of flour. I thought I'd give what is called 'strong bread flour' a try to see if there is any difference between that and the cheap flour I use. I therefore selected two bags of their own brand of strong flour.

We also needed some dishwasher tablets and some descaler tablets for the washing machine.

I collected some yeast (3oz) which will deliver a nice amount of fresh baked bread, then went to the checkout.

No go. The voucher has to be spent in toto, so I was sent back to find something else to make up the value. The only item I could find that we needed and that my arithmatic told me came close was another box of dishwasher tablets. My arithmatic told me that this was 7p short.

The till coughed up the total of £7.43 but the voucher was for £7.50 so it wouldn't accept it. The lady said 'we can't give you change'. I replied that I didn't want change. They could keep it.

Oh no, no way. The supervisor was called and she said the same thing - 'we can't give change' I repeated that I didn't want change and if they couldn't put the measly seven pennies back to the loyalty account, then write it off.

Oh no, we can't do that - it's got to be for the same amount. If you spend more, then you pay the extra. Since I was coin free, I told them to stuff the goods back on the shelf and I left the store with my packet of yeast and a sour feeling towards this pillar of the community.

I'll try my damnedest to make sure the bread comes out all right, but we'll have to wait and see.

Every little helps! - yeah, sure.

Greetings to everyone!