The day I came face to face with the ugliness of trolley rage — at M&S, of all places

MICHael Marks and tom Spencer would turn in their graves if they’d witnessed the scenes this festive season in the family stores they built on the principles of quality, value, service and trust.

three days before Christmas at the bromley branch of Marks & Spencer in South-east london, it is alleged that a 30-year- old woman — in an incident of so-called trolley rage — barged into a 60-year-old man so hard that he was thrown to the floor, breaking his hip and his wrist. He is now in a bad way in hospital.

So was this an isolated incident? Not according to the shop’s own workers. ‘ We have seen it so many times in the food hall,’ said one staff member. ‘ People are just so impatient these days.’

In other words, like many other big stores in britain over Christmas and New Year, M&S had turned into a virtual war zone.

I’m not exaggerating. I saw for myself on New Year’s eve just how febrile and aggressive the atmosphere had become at a time when people are supposed to be suffused with festive goodwill.

For most of the year, my local M&S in North london is an oasis of courtesy and calm. I know it is unusual among supermarkets in this respect, but I shop there every week and the staff could not be more helpful. they remember the names of regular shoppers and are delighted to assist if an item can’t be found. to see them threatened by furious customers — whipped up into a kind of New Year madness — as I did on Monday evening was a nasty shock.

the shop was heaving, with queues to the tills winding back into the aisles, and yet some shoppers were still charging around with their trolleys as if they were driving in a stock-car rally. they knocked people out of their way and grabbed armfuls of food from the shelves.

My niece and I had decided on a quiet New Year’s eve at home, and planned a dinner of turkey, sprouts, gravy and ready-made roasties. but when we arrived in the potato aisle, there were only three packets left.

THe scene was reminiscent of those boxing Day sales in central london last week with vast scrums shouting and grasping to get their hands on reduced designer handbags. Now, people were fighting over a tray of spuds, for heaven’s sake.

Honestly, you’d have thought they were an army of african orphans fighting for their first decent meal.

I gave up as I saw the last pack being pulled like a rope in a tug-ofwar between two determined — almost demented — shoppers.

even worse, those who had missed out turned on the staff, demanding to know why there wasn’t enough to go round, as though it wasn’t obvious supplies would run short on New Year’s eve.

One woman in a queue next to me had a complete fit when the girl at the till couldn’t redeem a £5 voucher because it had expired a week earlier. this same woman was unloading a trolley filled with £350 worth of food.

another woman was so infuriated at being unable to find the ginger sauce presumably crucial for her dinner party that she literally screamed at one poor member of staff. ‘It’s an outrage,’ she shrieked.

as I waited as patiently as I could in the long queue in M&S, I watched all these people, their heads down, faces set with grim determination, and realised they were in the grip of a kind of mass psychosis that seized them the moment they walked through the doors.

I felt it too, momentarily, when I found myself offering the man behind me in the queue three times what he’d paid for his four massive trays of roast potatoes — for just one tray. His response was unprintable in a family newspaper. It jolted me.

and then I thought: the world will not end without roast potatoes tonight. as I calmed down, I wondered why there is now such readiness to be moved to violent anger over such trivial setbacks.

although most common at Christmas and New Year when shoppers are out in force and acquisitive materialism is at its height, trolley rage — and how profoundly depressing that we actually have a term for it, with its own Wikipedia definition — is a yearround problem.

In February 2011, Hayley Cook, a 24year- old pregnant mother, broke a woman’s pelvis outside a branch of tesco in ramsgate, Kent, after a trolley- rage incident. In March of the same year, police were called to Morrisons in Weymouth, Dorset, to break up a fight between shoppers.

In June 2008, 57-year-old Kevin tripp died after being struck on the head following a row over queue- jumping in a london supermarket. So trolley rage is not particularly new but it does seem to be happening more often, as anyone who regularly uses supermarkets would agree. thankfully, assaults resulting in hospitalisation are still relatively rare — for now — but you don’t often hear ‘Please’, ‘thank you’ or ‘ after you’ from your fellow shoppers these days.

OF course, some might feel such supposedly common courtesies are increasingly uncommon in all spheres of british life.

I’ve heard a number of theories attempting to explain trolley rage. Surely it can’t simply be because so many shoppers wander around glued to their smart phones and not looking where they’re going?

Could it be something to do with the stress caused by the recession? Is it because rampant consumerism has been elevated to the status of a religion, particularly at this time of year?

Or is it simply due to the general coarsening of our society and the consequent erosion of civility?

We are surrounded by examples, from — at one end of the scale — ‘comedians’ being vile about the vulnerable on national television to — at the other — commuters casually putting their feet on the seats on public transport.

I believe that the seemingly inexorable rise of the cult of selfesteem is also a factor. third-rate performers on televised competitions insist that they deserve showbusiness careers because it’s ‘their dream’. every youth on the street now believes himself or herself worthy of ‘ respect’. Our schoolchildren have it drummed into them that they are all stars, little winners whose work must never be criticised.

Is it such a great leap to ‘I must have the last bag of potatoes because I’m worth it’, or ‘I deserve to be in front of you in the checkout queue just because I’m me’?

Is that pensioner moving down the aisle too slowly for you? Just ram him out of your way.

Wonky wheel on your trolley? take it out on the useless staff. Don’t they know who you are?

In the stark neon light of M&S this week, surrounded by shoppers simmering with barely suppressed fury, I felt a deep sadness.

this is a time of year when we should be thinking about new life and hope and the future. Instead, my heart was pounding as the adrenaline receded following a confrontation about potatoes. Potatoes!

It might be funny — if it were not so disturbing.