Shopping crisis solved

Not content with shutting the shops in Poland on Pentecost Sunday back in 2007, the government has now gone a step further and shut shops on what seems an arbitrary number of Sundays each month (two? three?) with the result that the Saturdays before the closed Sundays have become Retail Hell.

Last Saturday week, I visited Auchan, enduring a solid traffic jam there and back, Puławska chockers like on a weekday evening, and an almost-full car park. But all the check-outs were working, so things went reasonably well - except that five items on my shopping list were sold out.

I drove on to Lidl. Here, the situation was worse. The car park was full to the point of overflowing.  Inside, I found three of the five missing items. I picked up a handful of other things, and found myself at the back of a queue nine people long. Yes, there were nine other weekend-shopping desperados ahead of me with their trolleys heaving with enough produce to last out a war. I endured, paid and left to go to Biedronka to finalise my shopping there.

Yes, the last two Has avocados were there; I had five items in my hand, and sought my place at one of the three open check-outs. I chose the middle one. Just as I arrived at the end of the queue (four trolleys and a couple of baskets), the check-out person decided to close the till, the people with the groaning trolley in front of me were to be her last customers. I put my handful of grocers down and left, swearing I'd never shop on a Saturday in Poland as long as this (or any future) government insists on shutting the supermarkets on Sunday.

So I opened an online account with AuchanDirect, and made my first-ever online grocery shop last Wednesday. At first, a bit of a disappointment. The first two things I was after (Muszynianka mineral water and Maluta Balkan yogurt) were both 'temporarily unavailable'. The cat food was hard to find. The mineral water that was available was not available in the bottle size I wanted. Choice was limited compared to what's in the shop. (Only one Roquefort, not five, for example). But I gamely carried on, and in the end got most of what it was I wanted. Around 130 złotys (which meant that delivery cost 19.90 złotys was relatively steep but cheap in terms of time saved). However, by increasing the value of my shop, the relative cost of delivery falls. (Or I can collect the whole lot outside Auchan for free. Worth investigating.)

I selected a delivery window of 16:00-18:00 on Thursday. The guy came an hour and half early (which was no problem on that particular day as I was off work with a thick cold), but it could have been a problem had I specially arranged to come home for 16:00 to find that the delivery had come and gone.

The produce was in three cardboard boxes (not reusable), the six-pack of large mineral water bottles separately, and some free gifts - sachets of spices and a packet of mints.

It will take a while to change habits, but shopping online is preferable to the unpleasantness of shopping on a Saturday.

Incidentally, it is worth knowing that the Lewiatans in Zamienie/Nowa Wola and Dawidy Bankowe are both open on a Sunday.

This time two years ago:
Mszczonów - another railway junction

This time five years ago:
The Devil is in Doubt - short story, part I

This time six years ago:
Stormclouds are raging all around my door

This time seven years ago:
Floods endanger Warsaw

This time eight years ago:
Coal line rarity