Anyone braved the supermarket today?

[grumpy4squash]

Is it hideously crowded or not too bad?

We do our shopping at a Tesco that is normally quite quiet - not today! Luckily we only had to nip in for last minute bits (found out this morning that we need to take pudding to my sibling on Tuesday- nothing like a bit of notice!). That's me done with supermarkets until 2019 now.

Waitrose was rammed, not a single space in the car park at 10:25, they don’t even open until 10:30 so I gave up.

M&s was busy. But they had planned for long queues with extra staff, including ones handing out chocs. Wasn't hell. As long as you expect longer than usual.

Tesco at 10am. It honestly was awful. We always do our ship 22nd/23rd as it’s traditionally been the quietest days, with most people having been the week before but today the queues to the tills (including self beep) were down the aisles and people were VILE. The atmosphere was black and I wouldn’t be surprised if there was a fight in there at some point today.

Sainsbury's round our way was fine - all tills going and only a short wait.

It was okay in Sainsbury's where we are. I was done by 10 though and didn't do a big shop, main job being turkey!

Using the self scanner transformed our shop yesterday and got us in and out of the store a lot quick, I can't justify the amount of time and inefficiency involved in putting everything into your trolley then having to queue at the till to wait to pile it all onto the conveyor belt, have everything scanned and then packing everything into bags.

Takes no time at all if you have all the bags open ready to put things into (dairy, veg, meat, cleaning, bread and bakery, etc). Cup of free coffee on the way out.

My 18 year old son is just back from his shift at Tesco, he said it was manic all day. He’s having an easy night in readiness for a 6am start tomorrow.

I went to Booths earlier. It's on a small retail park with Aldi and B&M and the car park was carnage. I parked in a local side street after going once round the car park and deciding that life was too short to even bother waiting for a space!

Booths itself was fine. Loads of stock and not stupidly busy at all. Only 2 people in front at the till and one was paying as I was unloading. Everyone seemed in good spirits.

Me. Madness. I went to Asda. They had no double cream or parsnips so I then had to go to ALDI which had tons of both.

@NoWordForFluffy that's our nearest Booths! I'm glad we didn't try to go today, as that car park is a bit snicky and tight at the best of times. We mainly go for the craft ale and bread - we have plenty of both at the moment

We went to Sainsbury's around 12pm, it was gridlock. I just wanted to get some milk as we have everything else, but people were just wazzocks in the way they were trying to get round each other, crap parking skills, and just wanton blocking of other people.

I went at 10am, queue for the car park was out onto the main road. Moved fairly quickly though, as those who'd gone in at 9 and just needed to pay at 10 finished up.

I need to pop back tomorrow for a couple of things that were out of stock today.

@CurbsideProphet, I'm going to go to Hesketh Bank next year as you haven't got the other shops to crowd the car park.

I detest that roundabout and car park at the best of times. It was hell on earth today! A few people were parked in the pub and wheeling trolleys back to there!

Went to the local Tesco's on a whim to get batteries in case we ran out. Drove round the car park & left - don't need batteries that badly , , ,

Our local big Sainsburys had the Scouts doing packing , but I have my system with loading the conveyer belt and my bags .
(I did give them a couple of £1 coins even though I didn't use their services)

Will the shops be quiet tomorrow at 6pm?

I felt like I needed a Valium just walking through Sainsbury's in Saturday morning. Going to get there for 6 in the morning just to get some bread etc before it goes totally bonkers.

PinMoo, the shops will mostly be shutting at 6pm tomorrow, near is anyway. Worth checking times for early closing Christmas Eve.

Funny how people are saying how it was manic and gridlock etc, when they are part of it themselves!

I bet they complain about traffic jams too...

It’s Christmas Eve here and I was outside the supermarket waiting for it to open at 6am with DD2. There were about 50 people queuing outside the shopping complex but almost all of those were waiting to get into the fishmongers so the supermarket we went to was very quiet (no idea about the other one in the complex).

We had a mooch around and got everything on our list (and various other bits we just ‘had’ to buy) and got the MILs and neighbours extras for them.

We had 2 small trolleys and were in and paid in 25mins. Took longer to drive there than actually do the shop.

The car park was heaving when we came out (over 5000 spaces) so I dread to think what it’ll be like now (11.40am).

There was a punch up in my local M&S yesterday due to queue jumping.

Aldi was lovely- busy but good spirits.

Sainsbury's was ridiculous.

The Tesco drivers who did our delivery looked at me with trepidation when they handed me the list of numerous substitutions - bless them, the drivers here are lovely. He said they'd had lots of grief off people for substitutions.

Oh dearie me punch upin M&S

I stopped by Sainsbury's to get a pint of milk for the office and it was jam packed at 7:30am

Yet, my boss was there at about 8: 30 and it was quiet!

Went to our local Lidl around 8am, pretty quiet and normal for that time on a Monday. Managed to pick up everything we needed and loads that had been discounted including all the meats. The only thing we didn't get was ginger beer which we picked up in Aldi just over the road.