I want to share my recent experience at Tesco in Gerrards Cross and extend my sincere gratitude to Karin, an exceptional member of the store’s team.
Karin provides invaluable assistance during my weekly shopping trips. Her extensive knowledge, helpfulness, and positive attitude are truly commendable. Furthermore, Karin’s delightful sense of humour never fails to make me smile while I navigate the aisles.
Although we encountered some initial challenges, Karin and her colleague Eddie have worked closely with me to find the best solution for my shopping needs.
As a blind woman, I want to be able to shop for my family like anyone else. Under the Equality Act 2010, stores have a duty to ensure reasonable adjustments to help me do that. In Tesco’s case, this means they provide me with a phone number for the duty manager. I then give an hour or more’s notice of my planned visit, and they arrange for someone to meet me and assist me around the store. Most of the time, it’s Karin who is knowledgeable about the store and its produce. This makes such a difference; being given someone new who doesn’t know where anything is can be frustrating, especially when that person might not have English as a first language.
This assistance gives me the dignity to shop for myself and reduces my stress. Getting to the store to shop can be a massive hurdle for many disabled people before they even begin trying to select their items from the up to sixty thousand on offer. Some might have had to navigate public transport to get their shopping done. People might say, “Why don’t you get your groceries delivered?” That’s a reasonable question, but until you don’t have the option, you perhaps won’t appreciate the value of being able to wander the aisles and pick up things spontaneously for your family. Being able to ask in the yogurt aisle, “What’s on offer today?” and bringing back something unexpected to make your family smile is invaluable.
You might think that it’s just a case of someone holding your arm as you walk around the store, but there’s so much more involved. The person needs to know, or at least have a sense of, the 60,000 items in the store. They need to know the difference between popcorn kernels to make fresh popcorn and bags of ready-made stuff, or the difference between jelly blocks to make jelly and ready-made/ready-to-eat desserts of jelly. Often, these items can be in entirely different aisles or ends of the store. The number of times I have returned home to find that the person helping me has added something to my trolley that I didn’t want is frustrating. For example, as a Hindu, I wanted to make my family a roast dinner one Saturday. I went around another supermarket picking up all the bits—chicken, roast potatoes, parsnips, carrots, etc. When I got home, I found that the roast potatoes were beef dripping roast potatoes. As a Hindu, beef shouldn’t have even entered my home. Without the potatoes, I couldn’t make the roast dinner I had planned and told my family I was going to make. I was devastated. It’s such a simple thing, but I’m relying on the person helping me so much. I don’t see what they pick up and put in my basket; I don’t see what’s being rung through the till. When you can’t see, you like to be able to touch, feel, and smell what you’re buying because that’s the only way you have to check your purchases.
I hope by sharing this type of story I can explain why stores like Tesco GX and Karin are so important to me as a blind woman. They give me dignity and independence. It might seem like a simple adjustment, but it’s huge.
Thank you, Karin and Eddie; you are why I look forward to the weekly shop!
