Tesco is to launch a new home delivery service which will allow customers to experience all the stress of a weekly shop from the comfort of their own home. From compiling an order online to the delivery of your purchases, the supermarket giant will provide a painstaking recreation of the unpleasantness we have all learned to endure, leaving many customers unable to tell they have not actually been to their local store.
After logging on to the Tesco website, customers will tour the shop “virtually”, adding products to their basket accompanied by a soundtrack of unintelligible tannoy announcements and screaming babies. Meanwhile an annoying paperclip-style assistant shaped like a pound sign will bombard you with platitudes when you want it to go away before becoming impossible to find when you need help tracking down the cling film.
Once satisfied with their selections, patrons will be advised to place their purchases in the bagging area before being told items had now been removed from the bagging area and must be replaced to continue.
There will be further innovation in the home with the Tesco delivery team putting away your items using the logic practised in store. Pickles and condiments will be placed on top of your freezer, while essentials will be put as far away from your front door as possible.
It is thought the other big players will soon follow suit, and Stuart Dobbs, 42 from Swindon, who had been invited to test the new website, confirmed Tesco had thought of everything. “They will introduce Sunday opening hours online and, for their best customers, the delivery team will surreptitiously spray an odour composed of rotten fruit and milk around the house. If they closed their eyes these shoppers would be instantly transported to a store the size of a hangar with half-stocked shelves and armies of pensioners clogging up the aisles on mobility scooters. Attention to detail is their forte. As they say “Every little helps.”
