Supermarket opening times (Light Hearted)

ordinarygirl

I'm old enough to remember when shops shut at 5.30 and 6pm on a Friday. Half day closing and the co-op always shut between 1 & 2 pm for lunch
Never open on a Sunday. Shops that did open of a sunday (for newspapers) could only sell certain items. Years later when Sunday opening was allowed, the restricted items continued. I can't remember which but it was either loose tea or teabags - but one or the other could not be sold on a Sunday. Solihull Council fined a major supermarket for selling one of them on a Sunday . The same council by the way that fined for some shop for selling fruit when the label indicated pounds and kilos and not just kilos!

Ha haaaa! 🤣🤣🤣 I was tickled pink when the rules meant one could buy a " girlie "mag on a Sunday - but NOT a bible🤣🤣🤣🤣 only in (no sex please we're) Britain!!!!!

We have a(somewhat decimated now) fabulous market here in Chorley it used to be the envy of the north!! People would travel from miles away to visit the flat iron market on a Tuesday until the car park was swallowed up by......car parking! But our cattle market has expanded throughput the town now and semi pedestrianised former high street holds stalls on Tuesdays and sometimes a continental market in summer but it's not open every day!!!! Tuesday Friday Saturday only veg etc is on stalls run by local producers always has been! Used to make me snigger at some friends from Cirencester years ago who ranted and raved about their new "farmers market" which was miles out of town and full of trendies selling really awful stuff they thought was "farmer-y" !!! Overpriced and I'm not sure that avocados and prepacked quinoa with tiny bricks of badly made sourdough are a base crop in UK?.. may be wrong..............

We still have some shops in the village that shut for lunch, and a half day on Saturday. But it is Wales after all

I remember when all the shops closed at 5.30 or 6 on a Friday at the latest, they shut at lunch time on a Wednesday around here too. I used to love Wednesday afternoons in the bank where I worked as it was the only time it was quiet and we had an easy day and the manager would sometimes let us go home a little earlier. As children we would walk miles to a tiny little sweet shop that opened for a couple of hours on a Sunday afternoon for a quarter of sweets.
Once the shops closed on Christmas Eve my mum & Grandma never went out shopping for nearly a week, we just lived on what we had got in, we had a fridge but my grandma didn’t, she had a big pantry with a marble slab. no freezers either but we managed and very little food got wasted. We had a lovely milkman who delivered very early so no need to nip out for a pint of milk and end up spending a fortune on things you don’t really need!

And now there's Bank Holiday Tuesday (yesterday). On the way home from DDs I needed milk.
At 18.30 followed another car into the supermarket only to discover it was closed.

Auntieflo

My parents had a corner shop in the early 60's, selling sweets, ice cream, some frozen veg, cigarettes and newspapers. Customers, without fridges, would ask if they could collect their ice cream, or frozen peas, on Christmas day.
The shop wasn't open, but there was frequent knocking on the door until about 3pm, when mum, dad, and my brother had their own dinner. Often joined by an aunt and uncle.

My Son in law's GP's had this when they owned a newsagents shop - they had customers banging on the shop door on Xmas Day wanting to buy Fags or milk. If they didn't answer the cheeky buggers would go to the back door and bang on that until they answered as they lived over the shop!! In the end they used to open up for two hours on Xmas Morning just so they could get some peace.

I remember going to a small newsagent as a child with some pocket money on a Sunday morning. I asked for a bar of chocolate but was told that I couldn't have one due to trading laws. I pointed to something else, but no, I couldn't have that either. It all seemed complicated and unhelpful. Can't recall what I chose in the end, if anything.

JackyB

Sorry - not sure where "shut all day Wednesdays" came from.

Our local post office and Butcher used to shut all day Wednesday

So many changes. When we were first married in the early 60's hubbie and I uksed to get the bus on Christmas morning to go for the day to my parents. Stayed there overnight and got bus back home on Boxing day.

Before that can all too well remember that 1st January was a normal working day - indeed I actually started a new job one year on that date - difficult after normal teenage celebrations on NYE!!

I worked on Saturdays in a Sainsbury's mid 70's. Store closed prompt at 4pm on Saturday and remained closed until Monday 9.00 am.

I find the hysteria surrounding pre-xmas food purchases really bewildering - particularly as those that can afford those enormous loads obviously have lots of storage, fridges, freezers, etc. Surely, it is easy enough to plan, in advance, for a weeks worth of food to be brought home several days early. My last shop prior to xmas was a delivery on Sunday 19th December and the next one was on 31st December. In between all I required was some milk and bread.

I can’t say I was sorry when our local midweek half day closing ended though. It was on a Wednesday here and Tuesday in the town where I worked and I kept getting caught out.

And how I hated the Saturday shopping hours in Germany. We worked long hours with a hefty commute Monday to Friday then couldn’t have a lie in on a Saturday because everything shut at lunchtime for the weekend.