Do you suffer from checkout stress?

I was in Tesco recently and I did the thing that many of us do as we come to pay. You know the thing where we attempt to measure the length of each queue and then look at how much items each person in that line has and then we try to pick the shortest one. I’m a naturally impatient person and so this is something I put a lot of effort into. I’m not really sure why I do this because the moment you get into that queue, so many things can happen that make your wait longer or shorter than expected.

I unpacked the shopping onto the conveyor belt and was watching it head towards the till at a surprisingly fast speed. The checkout assistant was amazing, she was talking to the customer in front of me whilst scanning the shopping at lightning speed.

The customer in front of me paid and then it happened. The till logged her out and she called over the supervisor who was very apologetic. It turns out that the technical department can override any till at any time in order to work on it and that is what they had done.

We were moved to a nearby till and were served efficiently and promptly. I thought about asking for a discount for our inconvenience, not because I felt really inconvenienced but because I like to save money. In the end, I chose not to do this because the staff serving us had been excellent and I made sure that I thanked the person who had served us and we headed for the door.

Waiting for us at the door was the supervisor who gave my wife a bunch of flowers and apologized again. This wasn’t one of their cheap, economy bunch of wilted flowers, they were really nice.

What a blessing. As I walked out of the shop it made me so sad that I was nearly a grumpy customer trying to save a few quid. Tesco aren’t famous for their generous and personal care of customers and this supervisor really does deserve a promotion.

Who will we be generous to today?

When things go wrong, will our instinct be to blame someone else or to try to be a blessing and to make the situation better. It’s easy to go on about what is wrong with someone else rather than just trying to make things better?

Tesco aren’t known for this generous approach but that was my experience on this occasion. Many people in the UK have low expectations of the Church, but those of us who are Christians have the opportunity to bless and show the grace of God in such a way that we surprise people and change their view of what Jesus and the church represents.