tesco shopping trolleys.

[mummummymum]

hello,
yesterday when i went shopping with my husband and four children who are all under 4 i couldn't find a shopping trolley with a double seat so needing two i had to make two of my children walk around getting bashed by everyone else who was shopping. when i asked the customer service advisor he informed me a store of that size (extra) only had to supply 2 double trolleys for the whole store!!! !!!!
so on we went with great frustration as the kids pick up everything they see asking "can we have this" so it takes twice as long!!
at the end while we were packing the shopping one of my children went missing and after looking for a few minutes a kind member of public brought my son to us from outside in the middle of the road. not only could he have been run over and killed but could have been taken but god know who!!
still the customer service advisor did not see this as his problem and couldn't have cared less, he even suggested it was unusual to have twins and four children over all and went on to say they should have been on rains!!!! by this point i was very distressed and making a fool of myself
is it unreasonable to ask for a trolley with two seats? !!!!!!!!!!!!!

views please xx

FFS complain to Tesco then!

if your not interested then why are you posting on my post?

I'm confused by two things:

1. Customer Services is to help with customers' shopping - refunds, price checks etc, etc. Why would you expect them to chase after your children? I bet they had a queue of customers to deal with on a Saturday.

1. You say you can't "trust" your DH to do the supermarket shop? Why? This is a very weird thing to say about an adult!

I would have left dh at home with dc while I went shopping. Tesco is rubbish though:

When pg I had a slipped plevic bone so needed a shallow trolly. There were none in the trolly park so I asked at customer service if someone could get me one only to be asked "Why, what's wrong with your back?" They made a big thing of having to empty my deep trolly onto the conveyor belt as I simply couldn't do it.

A week later I went to Asda and asked someone to reach something down low on the shelves as I was in so much pain - the lady turned out to be the manager and she allocated a member of staff to walk round with me and get the shopping I needed - nothing was too much hassle. I now shop there and not Tesco.

there was no queue and this disscution is over now. i feel alot better about it thanks for the helpful comment everyone.

Princess I think it depends on your local store. I refuse to shop at ASDA because I find their staff extremely rude and unhelpful. One of their delivery drivers even turned up clearly pissed off with us because we were an extra delivery that had been added to his round at the last minute

susie I don't trust my DH to do the shopping either & I would probably die laughing if he tried to do the shopping with our 3 small children alone.

He'd buy the wrong washing powder, wrong shampoo for the girls & god only knows what he would make of my shorthand list requirements for wupl, p/crack, rpep, GreggSauR etc

mum you've been given a hard time but I hope you have also taken onboard some of the better ideas at helping you handle your shop & family at the same time.

Bit of friendly advice, change your username it's shite & drop the lol's.

Please don't call me hun or sending me hugs.

I heard this in Tesco today:

"Has she gone now? Is it safe to bring out all those double trollies we hid in the back room?

Your turn to nab one of the kids next time, Doris."

Blimey, the time you've wasted on this post you could have gone to Tesco 3 times!!lol

Your a norty nest of vipers this evening

I think mum messed up her mums net with her net mums this evening poor wee lass.

There's six of us in my house, 2 adults, 2 food monsters teenage boys and 2 toddlers both in nappies. (and a big hungry dog)

1. I only need one trolley if I go instore (rarely)

What are you buying?!

1. Why not shop online?

Ignoring everything else I am surprised they only had 2 double trolleys, surely there are loads of shoppers with two young children needing a double trolley. So on that point I may be the only one but YANBU .

Op, in a few years this will all- seem like a bad dream-- you will look back on this and laugh.

I had four under 5s and used to put one twin in a back carrier, one twin and the 3 year old in a double trolley, and the 5 year old would hold the trolley.

If I was going shopping when dh was home, he would stay with the kids while I went alone.

Good luck

I really don't see the big problem here. I only have one child, but I have plenty of friends with two under the age of 4 and they all manage to function in society with one adult supervising the two children. This was no different - one adult with two children - times two.

If the lack of a double shopping trolley is such a problem, how on earth do you manage normal trips out, not to the shops I mean?

Re: the two trolleys per shop requirement - I read that very much as that being the basic requirement, rather than it necessarily being the case that the shop only actually had 2 such trolleys. OP - did you go in all guns blazing to complain and someone pointed out that they were only actually required to have two?

Why don't you and your husband both get back carriers? Stick one of the smaller children on each of your backs, and one in each trolley. Sorted.

Earlier on in this thread, OP, you asked if another poster had ever had a 'bolter', and you referred to your children as being 'difficult.' Knowing that this was the case, perhaps you should have taken reins with you, in case you couldn't get the trolleys that you needed.

Or have back carriers, as kungfupannda suggests.

Or get the bulky items, such as nappies, baby wipes, tinned goods, loo roll, washing powder etc delivered monthly so the weekly shop goes down to one trolleyful - and I have to say that even when I had three children aged 4 and under, I never had to use more than one trolley except at christmas.

You could have booked the online shop for first thing Saturday morning, got it all put away and then gone out to do something fun with your family. And if you book the slots well in advance, I doubt you'd have a problem getting the slot you want. You could book a late night slot on the Friday night - all the kids should be in bed, and you and dh could put the shopping away unhindered - and then the whole of saturday is yours!

YABU. You and yor husband both went shoping togehter so you should have been able to jeep an eye on the two that were walking. I have taken 3 children under 5 shopping on my own before,

I assume your children are in childcare of some sort, seeing as you both work full-time & they are under school age. So why can't you pay for an extra & shop after work?

You decided to have 4 children, therefore it is up to you to find ways to do the household chores with/without them. You aren't always to going to find a trolley to suit your needs.

How would you shop if your dh had to work the weekend?

And no, I wouldn't really have expected Tesco to help me look for a child I lost.

i didnt have wrist straps as i didnt expect there not to be a double trolley!!

Maybe now you'll invest? Contingencies. It's called having a back up!

YANBU to expect a large Tesco store - a major retailer of products aimed at families with young children - to offer more than two trollies with two child seats.

Our local smallish Tesco has at least 8 of the 'baby & toddler' combo type, and dozens of the 'toddler & toddler' type, so I am very surprised that you were told there are only two.

I think you've had a bit of an unfair flaming on here today, although some sensible points have been raised too about how you might find shopping a less stressful experience.

At least in a few years the kids will be able to help push the trolley for you!

I think some of the posters here are missing the point. e.g. Why don't you and your husband both get back carriers? Is it really realistic to take two back carriers to Tesco?! I own one and (1) wouldn't dream of taking it to Tesco because I'd assume I'd be able to get a trolley and (2) it would be bloody hard work to do a supermarket shop - reaching up and down to pick items off the shelves - with a back carrier on!

I'm not talking about those massive framed back carriers - there are plenty of options out there that make life pretty easy. I don't own a pram - the commute, the shopping, trips out, all are done with a wrap sling or an ergo. I can't say I notice any difficulty with reaching for things.

It's not missing the point - the OP thinks that the point is that Tescos should cater better for her particular circumstances. I, and it would seem quite a few other posters, think that the point is that the OP could cater better for her own particular circumstances. I read a lot of threads of this sort on AIBU - AIBU to think that there should be more highchairs, AIBU to be annoyed about waiting for a lift etc. I think there are an awful lot of ways that people with children, particularly mums out and about on their own with more than one child, can eliminate a lot of the daily problems. Problems getting around with the pram? Try a sling. Not enough highchairs in your local cafe? Get a cloth or clip-on one. Can't manage the shopping with multiple children - do an online shop. Not all of these things will be for everyone, but there are a lot of solutions out there that people seem to want to reject out of the hand on the basis that X organisation should provide better. Even if that is right, you are still the one experiencing the difficulty, so would it not be better to avoid the problem in the first place? The OP has come back and back and back to 'well they should have had more trollies'. She doesn't know how many trollies they have just that 2 is the minimum requirement - perhaps there were 10 sets of twin parents shopping that day. Lots of good advice on this thread has been met with a lot of "yes but" rather than "good idea".

It beggars belief, doesn't it. The expense people are expected to go to and the complex workarounds they are expected to contrive, simply to do a bit of shopping. And the flaming the OP got for making the point that she would quite like to be able to turn up to a shop and be treated like a valued customer, like she might have been in other branches of the same store.

Ring slings, reins, wrist straps, backpacks; not eveyone can use them successfully, for a number of personal reasons. In days of yore you could smack children to make them conform, but I bet those people invoking child constraint technology would be flaming anyone who smacked their children in the supermarket.

It would kill you lot to be sympathetic, wouldn't it, you bunch of bloody know-it-alls, done-it-alls, anyone-who-can't-do-it-like-us-is-defectives. Walk a mile in this woman's moccasins before you point your accusatory fingers, you coven of criticisers.

My take on it is that the expense I have chosen to go to and the purchases I have made, are entirely worthwhile to ensure that my life runs smoothly and I am not dependent on shops/coffee shops/public transport having exactly what I need when I need it. I know I always have what I need and that makes my life run more smoothly.

If I was reliant on others for my needs I would find it stressful and irritating to be constantly wondering if there would be a trolley/high chair/space on the bus etc.

It is just a different way of looking at things - moan about the problem or negate the problem and get on with your life. I choose to do the latter. OP chooses to do the former.

Nice alliteration by the way, Boffinmum. Coven of criticisers. Don-it-all defectives. How about jury of judgers?

I actually think it's perfectly reasonable to expect Tesco to provide enough double trollies for their customers. OP is unusual in that she needs two but even a parent on their own with 2 kids wouldn't have been able to have a trolley to do their shopping.

I guess there are ways around this (delivery is the obvious one) but you shouldn't be forced to do this if you don't want to.

You could also do two shops a week one on weekend and one after kids in bed but really Tesco should be trying a bit harder to provide a good service for their customers.