A Little Beery Mishap

My dad would never phone me for a chat but he does phone me with news of the special offers that Lidl have on. This weekend, Branston beans are 87p for a pack of four. Thanks dad!

As all I have to do is walk out of my back gate and I'm in Lidl's car park, popping over to Lidl is no big deal. On my dad's recommendation and armed with a shopping bag and purse, off I went.

Sure enough, the first thing I saw as I entered the store was a huge pile of my favourite baked beans. Next to them was an equally huge pile of bottled beer.

It was my brother in law's birthday a couple of days ago and I had been meaning to buy some beer to give to him so I picked up a bottle to see if it looked interesting enough to make a good birthday present.

Lidl is a funny shop. Instead of using nice solid shelves, they stack their offer products on flimsy pieces of cardboard supported by more products below. Pile them high, sell them cheap. Had I realised that the products below had been undermined to a degree that the flimsy cardboard was actually supported by NOTHING I may have been less inclined to pick up the beer bottle for closer examination. In fact, I would have given the whole precarious construction a VERY wide berth.

I picked up my bottle and half a dozen bottles began sliding down the flap of unsupported cardboard towards the gap between the beer and the beans, destined for the hard tiled floor. I tried to grab them to prevent the impending disaster but with my purse and shopping bag impeding my intervention, I was powerless to prevent the inevitable. In fact, I set off a further avalanche of bottles.

Have you any idea how LOUD twenty or so beer bottles are as they crash to their doom in the echoey cavern of supermarket? Unfortunately, I do now!

The noise seemed to last an eternity.

As everything found its new equilibrium and settled back to an eerie silence, the beery foam spreading in an ever widening arc about my feet confirmed that the bottles had not been made out of special bouncy superglass.

Nobody ran to my assistance. Nobody even seemed to look up from their shopping to see what the commotion was. I grabbed my tins of beans and headed for the checkout where I paid and confessed my little mishap.

Luckily, the gentleman on the till was very nice and had a little joke with me about it all as well as bemoaning the shop policy that specifies the stacking method used. Apparently, breakages amongst the beer and wine are commonplace (perhaps that would be why the other shoppers did not seem concerned) As I left, a disgruntled looking shop assistant was stretching into the narrow gap to pull out broken bottles from the beery mess.

I went to Morrisons to buy my brother in law's birthday present!