Opinion: Supermarket chains are not just noticing empty shelves

Affected in some ways

I guess if I did answer a phone call any time soon, one question that would feature would be about how I am affected by the Coronavirus. Now, if someone from Yorubaland did call, I would get a greeting related to the event, the circumstance, the achievement, or my feelings.

But then, what is Coronavirus to me? It is quiet and I have made three phone calls with only the option to leave a voice mail. Whilst I am happy to sit at home alone for extended periods of time, I have decidedly pulled up the middle Venetian blind in my living room to let in natural light. This afternoon, the sun reflected off a windowpane across the road into my face, it must have been a glorious day.

The self-enforced self-isolation is fine if it is my decision, but when it is advised from an external situation, the satisfaction with being a hermit is challenged by a feeling of being imprisoned. I can handle it.

Everything is closed

There was one final notice I was expecting to see because my apartment complex which is a village of 6 apartment blocks has a games area, a gym, and a swimming pool. The leisure centre has been closed until further notice. It should not bother me because I have hardly visited the gym, but the thought that I can’t, makes it feel restricted.

Turning on my television, I am regaled with the news of empty shelves in supermarkets and the argumentum ad passions deployed regarding the elderly and NHS staff unable to get essentials from the shops. I do honestly sympathise with these people, but I am not surprised that people are stockpiling beyond what they need.

Government generated anxiety

The fact is people are concerned and they are afraid, the feeble assurances given by the government does not engender any confidence that essential goods would always be available. The communication strategy of the government has been muddled at best as they have flown kites about possible lockdowns or restrictions to movement, the natural reaction of the public would be to adversely react. It is, selfish and inconsiderate behaviour, not in any way unexpected.

The blame for this lies majorly with the messages of the leadership. If you cannot inspire confidence or persuade people of the greater good especially after the division that has dogged our society for the past few years no appeal to good nature would suddenly make the selfless out of the buffeted by uncertainty, worry and concern.

Blame supermarket lethargy

Supermarkets would just have to rejig their logistics to fulfil inventories in these trying times, supply chains would also have to become more agile and responsive to changing demands. The supermarkets cannot now say they are unaware that they are running out of bread, toilet paper, pasta, or hand sanitiser. They might not have been able to anticipate the run on goods, but they could have done more to address the shortages once it became obvious.

That in these highly automated logistics environments, they have not been able to scale up and adapt to changes in demand or adjust their supply chains suggests there are fundamental flaws in the system that the Coronavirus pandemic has exposed. Also, assurances from the supermarkets have to be met with commensurate action; stock the shelves.

Meanwhile, those who thrived on gaining political power with lies, proffering easy answers to complex questions have now been met with an intricate conundrum that hyperbole allows us to suggest has not been encountered before; the inept are now in government.

In my case, I would just go for a walk around the block and maybe sit in the gated village garden to meditate. This will pass.

The draw of decorated toilet paper

The haze of laze

I finally escaped the grasp of laziness to do some shopping that I should have done soon after I returned from holiday on Monday.

The convenience of just going downstairs where the supermarket is on the ground floor sometimes breeds a sense of slothful procrastination that begets a sour realisation that the store is close when a cursory glance is cast at the clock.

Without my visit today, I would not have known that all the while when I thought the shop was closed at 21:00 hours, from the beginning of the month the opening hours had been extended to 22:00 hours.

Soft and decorated

In any case, I took the empty glass bottles to the recycling bin and made for the supermarket, hitching a large trolley for my sweep of goods, foods, materials and drinks.

When I got to the aisle with toilet paper I was met with all sorts of choices and the options for comfort; 2-ply, 3-ply, 4-ply, soft, strong, firm, scented and decorated. What on earth would you need decorated toilet paper for?

Meanwhile, the quilted ones that had that fluffy feel were no more on sale, the balance of tender over the profligacy had to be met in the lightly decorated 3-ply option – I will just have to take a deep breath and hope for the best.

Little or large?

My mathematical head got the better of me as I thought about getting the tubs of Natural Greek Yoghurt, the large tub was 500g going for EUR 2.65 and the 170g tubs going for 85 Euro cents. The label for the 170g tubs listed them as 150g tubs which would have turned out dearer than the larger tub if I got 3 small tubs, but with the real weight of the tubs I had 510g for EUR 2.55.

Not that it would have really mattered but it meant, I have space the times between the consumption of each small tub than having to finish the large tub within a number of days.

The fuzzy logic that informs the whole process might turn out into a thesis but my trolley was full and it meant I was going to wheel the trolley upstairs than attempt to carry all that stuff the 150 metres to the main entrance and 7 floors up.

One of the fringe benefits of living above a supermarket and long may that be.

On the 8th day, the shop opened

Times are moving

One might just venture the idea that progress of sorts has come to my neighbourhood and that is in my local supermarket, 7 floors below my apartment and round the side to its entrance.

When I moved here just over 8 years ago, the supermarket opened for 6 days and closed at 19:00 hours, then a few years after it closed at 8:00 PM and soon after it closed at 9 ‘o clock.

The shelves were probably most empty on a Saturday night just as people rushed in for last minute shopping only to realise the goods had been cleared by those who shopped earlier in the day.

A different competition

If you found you had to shop for morning goods, you had to wait till Sunday morning for a shop opening 4 tram stops away.

Just about 2 months ago, a Turkish corner shop opened its doors on a Sunday and whilst you could not get the great variety of goods, it was nice to see that what you could get there was much different from the Dutch fare you got from the supermarket chain.

If I could muster the energy, I made the 500 metre walk to that store to feast my eyes of high capsicum factor peppers and other tropical foods I would have no idea how to for eating.

The look and the taste

The other day, I picked up what I thought were sweet potatoes only to peel them and find they were orange in colour, I was in two minds between binning or potting them, in the end they went in the pot and disintegrated into a pudding of sorts.

It reminded me of seeing “coco-yams” in an English supermarket and on cooking them they fell apart disastrously that the bin got well fed and I had an empty stomach, they were in fact dasheens.

Appearances are so deceptive, the grapes from my supermarket taste so different from the grapes in the corner shop, so synthetic as plastic behoves the beauty of supermarket chains over corner shops – food does not necessarily come from the farms without scientific intervention that changes it into something different and probably cheap too.

Open for the Sabbath

The perception of any of the Western European countries being Christian is slowly but surely gaining the spectre of secularism, very few shops except in tourist prone areas tend to open on Sundays and then we have Sunday-shopping days, usually once a month.

The Sabbath is losing its significance to Mammon, on the 18^th of April 2010 my local supermarket 7 floors below will be open on Sunday for the first time – I do wonder how many people in my neighbourhood would postpone their late Saturday shopping to brunch-time shopping on Sunday.

Forget the idea that Sabbath might be the Friday evening to Saturday evening, the Saturday or even the Sunday – man never seems to rest on any of the 7 days of the week, maybe we need an eighth day.

Is this progress or what?

A Dog's Dinner from your Grocery

No Dutch on my palate

I have not been one to heap praise on Dutch cuisine, but it is not fault of the Dutch, the fact is a national dish depends on the kinds of crops, ingredients and animals for food that can be obtained local to that region.

Potatoes, pulses and members of the cabbage family feature in many dishes which are either dark or bland compared to colourful Mediterranean or Tropical dishes.

Like the English, many cuisines have come from the sub-continent to augment local dishes; the English variety of Indian cooking is probably the most eaten kind of food in England, here exotic tastes from Indonesian are very prominent.

There was a time I had a salad full of grit which I took back to the chef, rather than replace the salad with a fresh one, he took one leaf ate it and the declared the salad gritless, you could imagine my amazement.

Food snobs they are not

However, that exemplifies the difference in care and attention that the Dutch have towards food compared to the French, Italians or even Spaniards.

Furthermore, I have the advantage of a supermarket on the ground floor of my apartment block. For light shopping, I take down a bag, for serious shopping, I wheel the trolley home – living on the seventh floor of an apartment block which has a supermarket should count for something.

Albert Heijn is the biggest supermarket chain in the Netherlands as part of the Ahold group of companies. There have been lots of improvements over my last 6 years of residence in the Netherlands – shelves are better stacked and labeled, you rarely find out-of-stock stuff, tills get opened when queues get longer, they have not gotten to a bagging service yet.

Unfortunately, what has gone into a decent and organized shop floor has been lost in food psychology.

Yikes!

I picked up a pack of meat – heart cubed for stews – I use it for pepper soup and an assortment of stew recipes. Apart from the label signifying what it was, it had another sticker – (Dier Voeding) – Pet food in Dutch.

Don’t get me wrong, I would suppose most human food is dual purpose, that is, it can be served to both humans and pets, but that should be an unwritten prerogative of the pet owner.

One other explanation might be, the cost of gourmet pet food might be so high that preparing you own pet food is a cost saver, and there are humans whose work it is to taste the edibility of pet food. That, said, this would have better be put in the pet corner and not amongst food for human-beings.

To put that dual-purpose label on food in a supermarket beggars belief – need I say more? I think we can conclude the Dutch have no clue about the concepts of food psychology; this is the fundamental of good cooking, if you could get that from Dutch ingredients.

Albert Heijn have now done the Dutch a disservice, but, if it is acceptable to the Dutch, I would not complain, basically, anything labeled dual-purpose like that, is for the lowest common denominator – in this case, I would not be eating pet food.

Behind the upfront deal lies a better offer

The Netherlands

The mobile phone operators market in the Netherlands has seen the influx of other European players; this both consolidates and introduces healthy competition in the market.

The customer ends up with a lot of choice, if they have any understanding about what to choose.

Moving to the Netherlands almost four years ago represented a seismic culture shock, which catches every career professional émigré by surprise. These were ones experiences; some have already changed for the better since then.

To be more specific that main thing to have in mind is that Amsterdam to the tourist is a lot different to Amsterdam for the new resident.

The Supermarkets

The supermarkets in the Netherlands were not of the quality seen in the UK. First the shelf arrangements; the only logic one could see was that things were in alphabetic order.

Antiseptics, Apples, Apricots; Tampons, Tomatoes, Towels; Salt, Sweets, Spoons. Apart from the fact that the names were a lot different - Tomato Beans (Baked Beans), SnelKookRijst (Long grain parboiled rice).

The till queues sometimes were so long and then some smart tiller decides to close a needed till anyhow; I just was not prepared for this, and a few times I just put things back on the shelves and walked out in disgust.

The Stores

Rarely do you get a complement, "This is the first time anyone has walked into this store prepared". May one generalise saying, the Dutch do not spend time researching what they require on a shopping trip.

Rather a shopping expedition is made a nightmare for other prepared people by customers who get the tillers to do all the research when they should be taking payments off customers who with goods in hands are about to sling them at that tiresome, undecided customer who might eventually not buy anything.

The compliment came from having researched what new phone one wanted, bringing in ones old mobile phone contract just in case any information needed to be transferred to the renewed contract.

The Queues

Do not even think of it. I once was the only one at a bus stop having just missed the previous bus. When the next one arrived, one could hardly find standing room.

However, once whilst returning from England, the same attitude became evident that I remonstrated. "We do queue in this country" to the surprise but eventual adherence of the miscreants.

Despair and be served

I used to say, the Netherlands is a lovely place to live in until you require service. One issue stands out when one phoned a service company and was kept waiting for 2 hours 20 minutes - by which time one could sing the whole on-hold music by heart.

Eventually, when the call was answered, I was put back in the queue for another 20 minutes because one could not speak Dutch.

The service company has improved considerably with the mission statement "Putting the customer at the heart of everything we do" I see myself served graciously and enthusiastically nowadays.

Estate agents

They made a large profit during the boom years up until the middle of 2001. Having the gall to charge deposits and commissions up to half the short-term lease of 6 months. If the opportunity arises, buy a house.

Europeans and resident permits - British Consulate view

Do I need a residence permit to live in the Netherlands?

We strongly recommend that you apply for a residence permit. As an EU citizen, you are legally exempt from the obligation to apply for a residence permit (verblijfsvergunning).

However, local practice is such that difficulties are likely to arise if you do not have one. For example, banks, health insurance companies and some employers may ask to see your residence document before entering into a contract with you. It is therefore advisable to apply for a residence permit from the Aliens Police Service (Vreemdelingenpolitie).

If one read that correctly, one can do without it, because one is legally exempt; however, it can be useful if one is entering into a contract where the contractor needs more assurance that one is here to stay.

I only wish someone included this in the study packs used for training immigration officers; I still get harassed for not having one anytime I fly into the country. One should intimate that one has obtained all privileges including a mortgage without having the absurd permit.

Road works

My view is the jobless statistics are low because every activity to do with road building, pavements and pedestrian areas is done six times. One does not need to prove this. Just check out any construction works over the period of 6 months and gaze in bewilderment why, they have come back again.

They all speak, surely not English

In general, the Dutch are basic polyglots. Polyglots in the sense that they speak at least two languages, usually three, apart of from the mother tongue, their command of English is rather rudimentary.

There are exceptional cases but it becomes obvious in the use of the following malapropisms.

Bring for bringing here and taking there.

They welcome in rather than welcome to or welcome aboard.

They borrow for borrowing and lending.

Formal email almost always includes hereby for herein or enclosed.

Double Dutch

My view is that the reason why Dutch is a difficult language is, you need to be word perfect for the Dutch to understand whatever you say. If you fall at that hurdle, they immediately switch to English without trying to help you out of the lingual rut.

Do not expect your acquaintances to help, the issue of teaching Dutch requires you go learn it out of sight and return a Dutch person. You learn Dutch through determination against and in spite of the odds, they are a proud people.

The Orange SPV E200 mobile phone

I was offered a deal to renew my mobile phone contract over the phone, but on further research I found, I could get a deal a lot better than the offer.

Therefore, on a new 2-year renewal, one got the Orange SPV E200 SmartPhone and a blue tooth headset all covered in the new contract.

Reviews later.