So Sainsburys would like us to #ShopForOthers. Potentially a great sentiment when the need for food banks is greater than ever. But are they selling this food at cost price? Are they giving some away free themselves? Are they match funding? No. It’s just another way to boost their profits and it makes me sick.

I regularly shop at Sainsburys.  They hever have enough working tills and they keep trying to force me to use the SmartShop App where you basically do eveything yourself.  I just won’t do it. I’d like a human to do the checkout stuff please. Preferably a few more humans so I don’t have to wait so bloody long.  Yes, I can do it myself, but you’ll make everyone redundant and then how will the old non-tech-savvy customer buy their food? Who will they talk to in their lonely lives? I did say this to one of the staff and they completely poo-poo’d my argument.  “Good luck in your new job love, in about 12 months time”, I told her.

Having said that there’s a couple of members of staff in my local branch that have special needs – and you know what? They’re bloody excellent! Hard working, know their job and very, very friendly. I’s a joy to talk to them and they make the older customers feel cared for.

Contrast that with the BBC Documentary Inside the Supermarket, which follows the staff of the grocery chain for a year. The store staff are great, but the CEO, Mike Coupe, appears to be a complete wazzock! He clearly doesn’t listen to his staff and his customers when their views differ from his own.

So, rather than fuel Sainsburys profits, which not trot down to a Food Bank and see what they really need, and work out the best way for them to get it.  Are they partnered with other supermarket chains, like Tesco or Waitrose? Can you (and they) get food cheaper with them?

Yes we should Shop For Others, but do it ethically!