‘scuse the awful pun, but the other day, I was alerted (by treadly) to the fact that Aldi had an upcoming sale which included some cycling gear. I am a keen commuter cyclist – that is, I cycle to work – on the weekends, I do occasionally do a bit of urban cruising, but I am not a ‘serious’ cyclist in the lycra sense. The Aldi catalogue displayed a number of items which promised to make my cycling warmer and drier, so at 8:50am I was waiting outside the store with a dozen or so others to try and grab my bargain.
Take note of that – a dozen or so others – this was no ‘door buster’ crowd. Brunswick folk don’t go in for that stuff anyway and judging by the body language I wasn’t the only one for whom this was a novel experience. The doors opened and there was no rush or rudeness, just an orderly stroll to the aisle with the goods. Unfortunately, that was where the rudeness began…
I’m not familiar with this type of thing, but a couple who obviously were, had pushed their trolley on an angle into the short, narrow aisle – deliberately blocking access to others from one end, while they occupied the other end and simply grabbed armfuls of garments and loaded them into the trolley. Frustratingly, they didn’t seem that interested in the rack of garments I was after, but they blocked me out nonetheless. I was able to get what I wanted by reaching through the rack from the other side of the shelving, but plenty of other folk were frustrated.
Anyway – I got a few things – about $30 worth. They all seem to be quite good quality, each one of them would normally cost more than $30 alone, so I can’t complain about the value.
As I was walking out I passed the couple with the trolley – they’d finally finished their ‘frenzy’ and were taking stock. One said to the other: “What are these?”, to which the other replied “I dunno – you put them in!”. Yep, that’s right, they didn’t even know what they were getting off the racks! – all they were interested in was stacking as much into the trolley as they could – they were now picking over it to decide whether they really wanted it… just amazing. Not that there is any law against it – you might take a couple of sizes of trousers to the fitting rooms, just to make sure you get the one you want – these people were simply taking that process to it’s extreme.
No point lowering myself to their level and getting pushy about it, but maybe, if there’s a next time, and I find myself blocked by these two shopping guerillas… I might just pull out the phone and take a video, so you can all enjoy the fun!