Friday 14 May 2010

All I needed was a flimsy excuse to kidnap a floor manager in Tesco

OK, now Mama Grit is teaching Business Studies to the gritlets.

Mostly, as you all know, because I am superefficientorganisedperson of the alternating educating variety.

Also because Innocent Smoothies junkmailed me by accident, announcing a Saturday morning kneesup. What a big neon strawberry arrow to an educational exploitation opportunity!

Plan A.
Visit Innocent Smoothies HQ, London.

Imagine! They make seductive coo-cooing noises at us. We try not to smash up their office furniture. They ply our flaccid overtravelled underhydrated bodies with upmarket ultrasmooth strawberrymash. We restrain ourselves from brawling in the car park. They send us from their HQ into the world, smiling with joy as brand ambassadors for delicious Innocent smoothie juice. We replace the photocopiers we have tried to steal.

Plan A is good. It will work.

My only reservation is the guilty temptational lusty fantasy (Number 546) I harbour about strawberry smoothie. The one which involves no cake at all (sub-section: No Cake). The one where the milkman calls and I beat him senseless with the hall table. I then strip down to my Asda value undies, pour strawberry smoothie all over my semi naked wobbly body and roll about the carpet drooling in smoothie lust.

(Of course I will not play out this fantasy because it is a favourite fantasy and enactment would spoil it. Also, we visit Innocent on a Saturday morning when the under-5s are present. They would be horrified, because they only came to meet a talking bunnyrabbit.)

But first, before our visit to HQ Smooth, there is: The Plan Before Plan A.

Actually, I have The Plan Before the Plan Before Plan A. This comes before all other plans. But that is already doomed. I have dumped it. FYI, here it is.

The Plan Before the Plan Before Plan A.
Bring Tiger to a state of smoothie agreeableness.

Doomed. She insists she hates smoothies. She wants to stay home and draw horses.

OK Tiger, I will not force feed you smoothies in the manner of a foie gras goose. But you are coming to HQ Smooth because it is too complicated to leave you at home. Plan A for tomorrow is already military clock, with sister1 on ice, sister2 who knows the value of a tenner, Mama who spies a Business Studies project, a geology museum asking to be tortured, and daddy Dig getting off a train. So you're coming.

I smile beguilingly. Hey Tiger! Howabout we whip up some enthusiasm for this, and go make an exhibition of ourselves in Tesco? Let's call it Business Studies: The Plan Before Plan A. Yes?

The Plan Before Plan A.
To be done in preparation for the fantastic on-site Innocent HQ visit! Like, NOW.

March into Tesco with clipboards and facial expressions of mean and authoritative purpose. Mini Ofsted inspectors of the smoothie sauce world.


Stand obviously with clipboards. In the way. Force shoppers to flow round us. My true purpose becomes apparent. Disrupt Tesco! Be irritating to everyone! HOME EDUCATED MINI HIPPIE TYPES IN THE MIDDLE OF SOCIETY YAAABOOOOO!


Write notes about things. Like carton sizes and where they are on the shelves and special deals and brands and everything. (And draw pictures of horses, but ssshh about that.)

Scrutinise cartons.


Be eye-spied by Tesco store manager. Capture him, interrogate him about supermarket design, turnover rates, shelf-life, product promotion, sales. Chop off his head to ensure he leaves with dignity intact.


Irritatingly, Tesco staff are helpful, interested, supportive, friendly, and enthusiastically engage in the sprung-surprise enterprise. I was rather hoping they all would be foul tempered, bloody minded, chuck us out and threaten us with the police. Then I could blast that out on the blog instead. Damn.

So hang around some more. Conduct secret survey on which shopper is brave enough to pick up a smoothie while being recorded for top secret consumer preference research purpose.


Be bribed to leave when mama Grit forks out twelve quid in six smoothie varieties to taste test at home.


Now, I declare Grit's Business Studies (The Plan Before Plan A) a complete success. Excellent preparation for a practical on-site visit to Innocent HQ (Plan A) which you can do too. They invite you, so go.

And of course I recommend this approach especially to all home educating hippie types with brass necks, thick skins, no dignity, and lust-fuelled fantasies for thigh crushed strawberry smoothies snatched over the bodies of dead milk men.

4 comments:

Glowstars said...

You know there's too many photos of your kids on the blog when strange bloggers recognise them at events and not you...
Good to see you guys on Saturday.

MadameSmokinGun said...

All the money you saved on mushy kidney bean surprise - and you've just blown it all on throat tickling Innocent lush! I have to hurry past the smoothie section - I can hear them calling but .......I will not succumb! Such fruity friskiness is wasted on small brat-things - it's MINE! - but the brat-things have got there first! Get back to the value 4 month old vitamin-less cardboard juice you open-mouthed vermin...... You see what it's like?

They're like drug pushers that Innocent lot. You but the big grown-up cartons on special offer and next week they just have the cute-looking specially for kids 3-sucks-and-you're-out little sachet things for £50! Bastards!

I'm gonna buy a blender.

Potty Mummy said...

Excellent initiative Grit - and sounds like that Tesco store manager has been paying attention at his customer service seminars... (FYI, I used to work on promotions with supermarkets in a former life, so might be able to add further colour if they really are interested. If the Gritlets want any further info just drop me a mail - we can always Skype if need be).

Grit said...

hi glowstars! it was fun to get in the kitchen, wasn't it? i could do that. i could press the button on a blender.

mme sg, shut up. you are right, dammit. what a stupid idiot i am. i blew the moral highground in one enormous bribe just to get out of tesco while the going was still good.

and i totally concur. i roll myself in the purple superfruit in the hope that it will transform my aged bagbody. that is how good their marketing is. and yes! innocent is not for children, not at all. it is all MINE.

Potty Mummy! You are a star! Thank you! I might take you up on that offer myself.

My plan for a business studies project started off quite well and it seems to have trailed off a tadge. But guess what? I'm not giving in. I'm sure they could start their own business next. There must be a route into enthusiasm for this area. There will be, and I will find it, oh yes I shall!