Larkfield Tesco (again).

I have often wondered what the priority of Tesco is, is it customer first, shareholder first or employee first.

I am not certain about at a corporate level but for my own dearly beloved Tesco, today I experienced something that proved to me, irrefutably, that it is the latter.

I am off today, puppy sitting, and thus have decided to make my wife a Toad in the Hole, all ingredients in except the red onions for the gravy. So to Tesco, where I also added a bottle of Noilly Prat (jolly tasty and a spiffing name!) and a couple of other things.

Halfway through my shop the clarion call that sends a chill into the heart of any regular shopping came out over the tannoy: "all managers to the checkout please".

This is enough normally to make me just abandon my shopping and go home, but days off being as precious as they are, I didn't want to waste my time, so I continued.

At the checkout there were two people in front of me and I was shortly joined by a Tesco employee (fully dressed in her uniform) with a trolley full of shopping.

The checkout next to us was closed.

A manager then turned up, took the woman by the arm and stated very clearly (and remember this woman was behind me in the queue), I'm opening this till. And then guided the TESCO EMPLOYEE to the front of the new queue.

Several people actually gasped at the sheer cheek of this move and to give the TESCO EMPLOYEE with the trolley credit, she blushed a brighter red that her bright red Tesco fleece. The manager, as you'd expect, was totally unfazed.

Because the Tesco woman with the trolley blushed so furiously, and clearly knew what had happened was wrong on many levels, I didn't bother to comment, she knew. The Tesco manager was clearly too stupid to register anything other that her own sense of self-importance.

As I have said before, the parallels between Tesco now and BA 15 years ago are too close to ignore.

So now we know, in my local Tesco at least, the best way to any sort of quality service is to be an employee. I may search eBay for a Tesco uniform and see if that gets me any better treatment.