The Weight

"Can you tell me where I'll find the freshly-baked bread?"

Personally, I don't expect staff in the main, national supermarkets here to speak English. Were I from Madrid, I wouldn't go into the Hemel Hempstead Tesco and anticipate that the checkout girl would be fluent in Castilian. So Puerto Alcúdia is a tourist place; so what? In a tourist supermarket, it might be different, but the so-subtly red-painted Eroskis are "Spanish" supermarkets in which the staff have a tendency to speak Spanish or Mallorquín and only Spanish or Mallorquín. Consequently, launching into a well-constructed question sentence, as the lady who uttered the above did, is likely to induce a look of nonplus.

There are establishments here who I believe have every right to absolve themselves from any duty to be multi-lingual, and the mainstream supermarkets are one such. But this is not to absolve them totally, or to excuse either their mediocrity or the seemingly perverse inability to prevent inconvenience or embarrassment. Take the business of weighing fruit and veg. Now, you might think that a counter in the middle of the greengrocery section with a balance and some buttons might just suggest to the tourist (usually Brit) shopper that there is a point to the counter. But never underestimate the blindness of that shopper. Rather than sticking up a large sign or two in English and/or German that explains the whole procedure, the only advice is that given in Spanish. As a result, the lengthy checkout queues (and let's also mention the lack of checkout staff) get longer while the non-weighed and therefore non-priced apples or potatoes have to make their way back to the greengrocery department. Often it is the bewildered customer who has to make the journey. The British, especially the British, hate social embarrassment. That is why, on more than occasion, the offending customer has returned from a fruitless return journey minus the bananas. I heard one woman mutter to her child that the machine wasn't working. Of course it was working; she just didn't know how to use it. And she didn't know how to use it because rather than spending time finding out she wanted to get out quick and spare herself any more embarrassment. If they would just put up a sign or two ...


And current weather watch. It has gone beyond the joke stage to one where it is now a bit serious. The fifth weekend in succession that has been washed out. It chucked it down again yesterday. Still, maybe a few enterprising supermarkets have been getting in stocks of umbrellas, but I wouldn't bank on it.


QUIZ
Chain - Geoff Downes who was part of Buggles. And what about the Buggles takes us to Yes and "Owner of a Lonely Heart"? Yesterday's title - Harry Nilsson. Today's title - who did this?

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