Have you ever witnessed the Tesco battle?

[7SunshineSeven7]

It happens in the fruit and veg section and in the fridge section.

The reduced stuff gets put out later on at night and its like everyone loses their mind. Elbows go flying, people start swearing. I saw an old man push into a woman with his trolley for some grapes. The poor worker putting the stuff out has a deep, harrowing look in their eyes as they try to throw the stuff down and get away!

It is insane. 10/10 would recommend.

this made me laugh

Two women grab the same baguette, its like trumps launched the nukes

I did try it in Tesco once to get a large tub of still rather Juicy looking Olives which had been placed there from the Deli counter. I wasn't quick enough though.

Whenever I've passed since it's just 30 bags of extra ....gone curly, curly Kale with a saving of about 10p with a bagged up bit of herring perched on top.

Then when the staff member comes along to do the final reductions down to silly prices ( like 30p for a tray of mince) she comes back to the person doing the reducing and hands the items over to be reduced further.
We have a winner!!!

Chippednailvarnish Its all on the lower shelves where I am too! Makes it much easier to topple people over with the lightest knocks if they're bending over like that.

The reduced section in my Morrisons is pretty polite IME. If we're doing demographics, it's on the very cusp of a 'naice' area and a somewhat more disadvantaged area.

It's good mainly for reduced ready meals and the like. There's always a dubious-looking pack of Scotch eggs in there too, that no one ever wants.

Mealy-mouthed, miserly, curmudgeonly behaviour in the extreme.

with a cohort of other tight arses people

Be grateful that you've never been in the position of having to do your shopping like this.

Dawn, TBF I think people are really talking about those who probably don't have to shop like this but choose to (like the medical consultants mentioned).

If you can afford to shop in Waitrose or M&S you probably don't technically need to descend upon the reduced section in order to eat but are doing it out of the 'principle' of saving a bit of money.

Sapphire, whilst others have mentioned those two, people have talked about Asda and Tesco. My ds (32) was telling me the other night how he quite liked going to Asda at half nine when he was in his very early teens because that was the only way we got treats. I used to feel humiliated, so the sly glances etc are often embarrassment about having to shop this way. People judge without having a fucking clue and it hacks me off, it's the judgemental ones that are mealy mouthed harridans, imo.

My best saving once was a leg of lamb reduced to 49p!
The same women hang around the reduced section in the store I work at every day, they can be very scary, the staff do the reductions in the warehouse to get away from them and security have to escort them to the shop floor.

Our reduced aisle is really quite civilised ! If you know when the reductions go on at our Morrisons and get there are at the same time , you tend to see the same faces . We get a whole cabinet to browse through , but one man , who is the tallest , tends to elect himself chief browsee , and calls out the goodies to everyone else waiting like an auctioneer ..

" and we have .... honey roast ham , 60p a packet , 5 of , who wants some ? ' .. hands it round , "anyone for a duck ? Fiver ' etc etc . Works a treat!

I love Auctioneer man holding back the rabble

I do always look out for reduced-price stuff (and stick it in the freezer if it's a lot) as I am on a low income, but have clearly not been going at the right times as I don't see bunfights! (And I am MOUTH AGAPE at Only1scoope's wheelchair being moved without her permission!)

BUT I was in tesco the other day, swung by the reduced-price section, I was the only one there, a ton of Aberdeen Angus beef going ridiculously cheap just being put out (£1.30 a pack) and so I got some. At the checkout, I was chatting to the woman at the till, said what a bargain it was, and she said exactly what you did, OP! And then she said half the people that grab the stuff then leave it at the till because they then decide they don't want it. (She wasn't being rude to me, because I'd said I was the only one at the reduced-price bit, amazed there was such good stuff there.)

In Tesco I once saw a woman load a basket with every single pack of reduced meat she could fit in it, joints of beef or lamb I think. She was fending off all comers with her basket on one side and her elbow on the other. I'm sure she wished she'd got a trolley because the basket was so full of joints of meat she could hardly lift it to carry it to the checkout

Oh I like him too

I used to work in asda and one time the fresh manager made a mistake with the chicken order. So we had a lot of chickens which had been reduced to 50p. One customer put the lot in his trolley, must have had about 20 chickens.
That is just sheer greed.

The people doing reductions hated it, lots of people grabbing and sticking items in their face demanding it be reduced even if it was still well in date.

Auction man sounds like a sensible addition. Maybe they could elect a customer per store
I got filmed once (and in work uniform) with someone commenting "here they are, scum of the earth fighting for bargain shit food nobody wants"
That was the politest thing he said while filming me. The weird thing was, there was maybe 5 of us browsing politely

49p?! Not Baaaaaaaaaa-d.

ArcheryAnnie Its like 8 at night where I am. They put some out throughout the day but the later it is the more then reduce it.

Auction man is a hero.

I don't disagree, Dawn, but I'd like to give the poster who made the 'curmudgeonly' comment the benefit of the doubt and assume they were referring to people who don't have to buy reduced and do it in expensive supermarkets.

If you can afford to shop in Waitrose or M&S you probably don't technically need to descend upon the reduced section in order to eat but are doing it out of the 'principle' of saving a bit of money.

Sapphire if I'm passing waitrose or M&S and have the time, I will check to see if they have reduced-price stuff, because weirdly enough the poshest shops often have the biggest reductions, possibly because naice people won't buy super-cheap stuff so they flog it to people like me!

I did see 2 women fight over some kids wellies think they had a character on them, they were looking at sizes both grabbed a wellie and was obviously the size they wanted there was smiley glaring and 1 woman said oh it is a shame there is no other sizes other woman looked terrified putthe wellie down and backed away

DP is one of them ...I don't think he fights over things (not to my knowledge) and he doesn't have to - but he always comes home with reduced things...from M&S to Aldi. And it pisses me off...I nearly posted in AIBU about the other day!
He'll come home with 4lt of milk bb date that day. We already have enough milk in - so I have to start working out which one to use first etc. And thinking about ways of using it up - and often things end up in the bin. He once came home with an obscene amount of reduced bananas from Aldi (and I really hate bananas!) - he spent ages pureeing them up and filling the freezer with them - force feeding them to the DCs - and I'm pretty sure the frozen puree was grim (it looked grim - went brown) and didn't see it all get eaten - suspect some was disposed of on the sly.
Something might only be 20p -but if you can't eat it /use it you might as well as chucked that 20p in the bin.
And as others have pointed out - some people could really use that stuff - really need it, have to depend on it. And that feels wrong.
(To be fair to DP he grew up in a really poor household - as a child he often went hungry. Hiis (abusive) DM used to send him and his brother shoplifting for food...and he used to shoplift food when she was deliberately withholding food from them..I think he forgets sometimes that he is fine now.)
My DSis will always look in the reduced section as a way of trying to reduce food waste - usually gets things that have been left behind and will end up being binned.
I don't even really look any more but have picked up things that I have noticed - like lots of cheddar cheese in the local shop - it was just before closing time and the assistant was loading it up to bin it (I grated and froze it).

Viz has a recurring comic on that subject called "Oops Apocalypse" (that's Asda, but still). Dead funny/tragic.

The thing that riles me about Tesco reductions is that they are often so tiny. Waitrose are much better at reducing their stuff by a decent margin.

M&S are THE worst
Ive literally had people taking stuff out of my basket when my back is turned and people blocking the section with their trolleys and their bodies in such a manner they get EVERY Mark down . The staff say nothing . I literally had to shout " can I have just ONE of those " when a woman was literally putting about 20 of the same reduced indian ready meal in her already full up yellow stickered trolley
Even the staff member gave me a filthy look
I like a bargain and I'm trying to do the best I can and save money like the rest of them but I avoid m&s around 4.15pm now it's just too much

Vanillamanilla1 Take no prisoners.

Yes, I've seen it. Once. They had a member of staff and two security guards wheeling out the reduced items. It was quite scary they had to tell them back off as they weren't letting them out of the doors properly. Then they gave a warning about pushing before letting them loose.

It was terrible, lots of shoving and trolley barging and indiscriminately grabbing as much as possible. One of the staff said it was the same people every day, some local business owners. I don't know.

I don't think it would be possible to get near the food if you wanted to have a look yourself. You'd have to literally push people out of the way