Shop of horrors

I DON’T want to be a grouch, but some grocery shoppers should be banned from supermarkets.

Like the woman this week who knocked over a bottle of marinade, smashing glass and splattering liquid, then took off at lightning speed without bothering to notify nearby staff of the mishap.

Never mind if someone had slipped and been injured.

Slap a ban also on the Very Important Shopper who discarded a parcel of chicken in the biscuit aisle. Too bad if the meat spoiled.

Shoppers who act like tools ruin it for the rest of us. They endanger public safety, increase food wastage, which pushes up prices, and show a total lack of respect for those left to pick up after them.

As I returned the abandoned chicken to the deli counter (where it was tossed in the bin), I passed the staffer who had mopped up the marinade near the fruit and veg area.

“I saw what that woman did,” I said, “makes you wonder who her slave was in her last life.”

“That would be a green grocer at Woollies,” he replied, “but this sort of thing happens a lot these days.”

Really? At what point did people stop caring, stop taking responsibility for their actions?

Good manners should not have a use-by date, yet they seem in very short supply.

I’m not the only one cheesed off by ignorant, selfish shoppers. A new poll identifies the most irritating grocery buying behaviour and which misdemeanours other shoppers are most likely to call out.

The peak peeve, at 99 per cent of the 1026 adults (aged 18-87) surveyed by Treadmill Reviews, is cutting in line.

Not far behind, at 97 per cent, is leaving perishable items elsewhere in the store and, at 90 per cent, blocking the aisle with a trolley.

Tasting produce, such as grapes, before purchasing – what I call petty theft – comes in at 80 per cent, closely followed by consuming items before buying them – because you couldn’t possibly be expected to wait – and leaving the checkout line when groceries are being scanned to grab a forgotten item – because inconveniencing others is not your concern.

The list of beefs extends to behaviour outside the supermarket and includes trolleys ditched in parking spaces.

But the indiscretions most likely to prompt confrontation? Queue jumping and aisle blocking, with more than half of the respondents admitting they would say something to the offender.

Fascinating as all this is, I can’t imagine such a poll even existing in generations past.

Respect, patience and courtesy seemed more common in my parents’ and my grandparents’ day. What gives? It’s not as if food is going to run out and you’ll starve, so you’re entitled to snatch what you can. Being on a tight budget doesn’t make it OK to “sample” food, or to encourage your kids to scoff their entire recommended daily intake of fruit from a tasting plate that might be offered.

Similarly, the big profits generated by supermarkets aren’t licence to pilfer what you can or to ruin produce without offering to clean it up and pay for it. They just aren’t.

Demographer Bernard Salt has spoken about the rise of individualism over collectivism, the idea that our world view has shifted from the need to play a minor role in a larger society to thinking that the world, and everything and everyone in it, should revolve around us. Think “me” instead of “we”. Salt says this transformation has taken place over the last 40 years.

Where once it was considered virtuous to sacrifice or go without – putting yourself last and the welfare of others first – in the latter part of the 20th century this started to become most unfashionable.

Enter the notion of “middle Australia”, where Salt suggests people became comfortable accepting handouts, including welfare payments, because they had come to feel entitled to a certain standard of living, independent of how hard they worked.

Regardless of the factors that have brought us to this point, only a fool – or an unapologetic narcissist – would think rampant individualism is a good thing.

Human beings coexist in communities. How we act affects others.

So should we call out misdemeanours if we see them? Yes. The behaviour we walk past is the behaviour we accept.

This doesn’t mean we turn into vigilantes, but with a gentle word some people will be nudged towards better behaviour. Others will tell you to shove it, but that’s a risk we take.

Ultimately, supermarkets need to take a lead role in policing what goes on in the aisles and look at ways to ban repeat offenders. Buying groceries is a necessity. It should not be spoiled by tools.

Kylie Lang is a News Corp Australia columnist

“How we act affects others. So should we call out misdemeanours if we see them? Yes”