Today’s The Guardian piece about posh eggs being a shoplifting target caught my eye. Probably because I love a posh egg.
Burford Brown eggs – preferably in the carton of ten for relative economy – are the only brand I buy from our Waitrose. Their deep brown shells and aspirational packaging make them hard to resist.
And now it turns out that chancing shoppers aren’t smuggling the eggs out of the store under their jackets. Instead, they open the carton, swap them for cheap ‘Essential Waitrose’ eggs, and pay the lower price.
It reminds me of that story – or perhaps urban myth – about supermarkets selling more carrots than they buy.
What?
Well, we shoppers are now increasingly asked to bag and weigh our own fruit and veg. And some are apparently weighing expensive items… but pressing the carrot button. The carrot being the cheapest of vegetables, often weighed loose in conveniently unsuspicious quantities.
Supermarkets surely know this and quietly adjust prices to cover petty theft. Or perhaps the staff cost savings from letting customers self check-out are game-changing. Those self-checkouts might also be why some people feel no shame.. reasoning that if they are doing the work of a shop assistant, they might as well profit from it.
Which raises a question for posh egg shoppers like me.
Are my eggs really posh after all?
Vigilance must now ensue. I already open the carton to check none are cracked… or overly caked in chicken poo. Now I will also have to check whether they are genuine Burford Browns.. or whether some chancer has switched them.
Progress, I suppose.. or human nature at its worst.
Either way… I’ll be checking my Burford Browns more carefully next time I’m in the Waitrose egg aisle.
Andrew Greenhalgh 