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.

I used to do reductions in asda, I used to wheel them out, grab a gun and a printer and faff about for 10 minutes (on purpose of course) then have to pop upstairs for some more reduction labels, people used to get really annoyed with me and be stood waiting for something, but I'd reduce everything else first!

very funny and yes we used to get squashed into the fridge...to the point that one day I swear there was about 40 people behind me when I turned around and the whole aisle was blocked up with trollies!!

Madness!

Supermarkets here tend to reduce perishable items at the start of the 'best before' day. They then go back on the shelf with a standard 35% off sticker on them. Same goes for M&S. Nobody has these huge last-minute discounts.

We do this, too but if we've still got stuff left at about 6pm then they get further reduced, and then again to final reductions at 8:30/9pm because we'd rather sell it for pennies than have to throw it out (especially when it'll still be perfectly fine to eat for the next few days) just because it's at the end of it's permitted shelf life and people don't want to buy it at 65% of full price.

I live in the Lake District so as we're quite rural there's a lot of animal charities, stables and farms based near our store, so you'll get their staff coming in a few times a week to buy whatever fruit/veg is on final markdwn for the animals, but - esp the charities - they have to stretch their, often very limited, budgets. Only last week there was a mix up with deliveries and our produce department got an extra stock - cucumbers, lettuce, tomatos, broccoli, mushrooms, carrots, the lot - compared to normal so they had to mark it all down to final reductions, most for less than 10p, just to get rid of it ... one of the local animal sanctuaries came in and spent £70 on 294 reduced items that would keep the animals going for the next week (I only know the number because it hit the magical "upper limit of items in a single transaction" limit that I have never reached before) ... if it was all full price it would have cost easily ten times that, which they could never afford to spend every week!

The problem comes from people who know about the reduction cycles and will lurk, not because they need the discount, but because they just want to buy a bargain for the sake of it. Like the two guys in my story earlier, they would come in every day and just take everything that was in the final reduced section, regardless of what it was, just because it was there and you knew they'd be back to do the same thing the following day too. You'd hear them at the checkout actually saying things like "What is that you've got there? Oh, you don't like them, me neither!" and so many times I'd have to bite my tongue not to say "Well if neither of you like it, put it back for someone who a) does and b) can't afford to pay full price!"

A few years ago I was in Tesco on 27th Dec - usually after Christmas you see masses of over-ordered veg reduced loads and usually in various crates or trolleys in the aisles as there is so much. So, I saw such a trolley full to the brim with bags of various reduced fruit and veg and decided to have a rummage - 10p this, 10p that .... then I heard a voice behind me asking what I thought I was doing stealing from her trolley! There must've been literally hundreds of things in there!

A little bit off topic but when you have this kind of situation www.gazette-news.co.uk/news/15060009.Man_steals_food_to_feed_his_disabled_wife_after_spending_all_his_money_fixing_heating/ people desperate for cut price food doesn't surprise me.

thesecret 'benny hill routine' 😂

Best whoopsie bargains I've ever had:

When Tesceurgh bough WMLow - all sorts of stuff, in stacked crates, reduced to pennies. Fair stocked up on dried herbs and continental chocolate, then!

Height of the BSE crisis. 250g of steak mince or stewing beef for all of 50p, week after week after week. Great on a student budget (27 years on and still not mad).

Oh and 9p eggs in Morrisons on a Sunday Morning! They had lots, so whoever had ordered for that week had probably got it in the neck!

This is a brilliant thread

*PickAChew" 50p for mince? You was robbed! As I said upthread, during the BSE crisis we were buying Tesco steak for 4p a pop in south London!

Mealy-mouthed, miserly, curmudgeonly behaviour in the extreme. I can picture the sort of person who would do this.

I can assure you that you can't

Reducing time coincides with the time I often call in on my way back from work, so I see this quite often.

One night when there was much bickering occurring, Mr Tesco Man made them all line up and take one item each before returning to the back of the queue and "any shoving and I'm throwing you out of the store!". It was fabulous. I usually run away.

I've noticed they sometimes post lookouts in the different sections - bread / fridge / veg or have three carefully positioned trolleys then meet up and trade, it's a teamwork thing.

Back when Noah was a lad I was a Saturday girl at M&S. At the end of the day staff were allowed to buy going out of date food at very reduced prices. We had to form a queue by the checkouts when the store closed. The old hands always managed to get to the front of the queue to snaffle the beef joints and novices like me were at the back to mop up the lone limp cucumber. One glorious day I somehow managed to be at the front. The store manager, who hated me, decided to reverse the queue! Forty five years later and I still bear a grudge

My best ever bargains were big pots of cream in Tesco for 1p (must have been the get rid of it for a penny because it costs to get rid of it).

Went into the local small Co-Op on the way home to grab some milk and picked up two packs of mince for 89p each, a leg of pork for £2.50ish reduced from £7 and a cheesecake for 29p. And I wonder why I can't stick to my diet.

I do bakery reductions once a week and love the yellow-sticker hunters. I just want to get rid of the stuff.

But if people start waving rolls in my face or getting arsey about prices (manager is strict on reduction percentages), I turn off the label printer and walk away.

"I turn off the label printer and walk away"

Not a supermarket, but this thread has reminded me of a lad I was pals with who'd started work in Toys R Us. An item had been on the shelves mispriced; it should have cost £5 more than the erroneous price stickers displayed. My pal was told to relabel them with the correct price. So, off he trotted with his sticker gun.

When he'd finished, all the items' price labels read, "WAS £9.99, NOW £14.99".

Needless to say, his supervisor was not impressed.

The store manager, who hated me, decided to reverse the queue! Are we all up for a revenge mission then?

I just moved next to a Coop and have discovered they have loads of yellow stickered goods right at the time I get home from work! Never a scrum, either.

I only buy reduced in Marks, so I often get home with a random bag of madness! The bread is the best, folk try to act cool...

Not actually witnessed this,I am disabled and too feeble to get involved in any physical stuff like this,but my DD has. 4 years ago on Christmas eve,she went to our local Asda,mid afternoon,to see if she could get any last-minute reduced bargains. It was a bit of a scrum around the reduced section,and she had found a few nice items and put them in her trolley. Unfortunately, another shopper thought she would help herself out of DD's trolley. DD saw her doing this and challenged her,asking her what she was doing. The woman totally flipped,launched herself at my DD and pushed her against a shelf,and tried to get her hands around her throat. Luckily,my DD is strong as an ox and very quickly fended the woman off. 2 men who had witnessed it held the woman while security was called,who marched her off the premises. All this over a packet of half-price bacon.

That makes me sound posh. I don't mean that I only go to Marks. I mean I never buy full priced there. I shop in Tesco mostly!

When I was about eight months pregnant a woman rammed me with her trolley to get a better look at the reduced section! We'd just moved and I hadn't even realised it was the reduced section... and then her husband picked up a reduced apple pie (not even that much reduced) and asked me if I wanted it because 'I looked like I'd enjoy it' whatever that meant!

Our M&S discounts are awesome. I pop in when I get back from my commute which is basically sticker o'clock and they are decent reductions as it ain't exactly cheap to start with - £4 ready meals down to a pound or less, packets of cakes or hot cross buns for 15p.

When it first opened they clearly had their stocking levels completely wrong because you could basically do your entirely week shop, including beautiful fresh cut flowers, on yellow stickers. We ate very well for about a month!

I like the reduced stuff in Waitrose. The done thing round here is to pretend you aren't that interested, but still end up with a trolley full of stuff that's miraculously all reduced, because what kind of idiot actually pays £3 for a miniature cauliflower.

I have a glorious big flower bouquet from Tesco still going strong 10 days later (it's in my bathroom, which is chilly), £3 down from £15, happened on it when I dropped in at an unusual time to go to the pharmacy.