Waitrose

Dear Sirs,

I am writing, regretfully, to make a complaint about one of your 'takeaway' salad pots. I have been a long-standing and loyal customer of yours, partly because I have always found your products and customer service to be of very high quality, and also because the only supermarket any nearer is Aldi and frankly I try to avoid that nest of grinning pygmies and inbred cretins as much as possible. Tesco is not too much trouble to get to but I do find that it is frequented by the kind of people who like to smack their children in public. Generally, I am not opposed to a spot of corporal punishment in the right situation, but I don’t see why I should have to listen to the sound of other people’s obnoxious spawn at top volume while I’m trying to do my weekly shop.

Regardless of Waitrose’s various triumphs over other emporia, unfortunately today I experienced an overwhelming sense of disappointment and dismay. My good lady-wife, Agatha, who is somewhat of an enthusiast for healthy, wholesome food, bought me a salad ‘to-go’ for lunch because we were running late for our Monday afternoon bridge game. I must admit I am not usually a fan of lettuce and such, considering it more the sort of sustenance as might be taken by a rabbit or some other fluffy and essentially useless creature, but generally I find those from the Waitrose quite flavoursome. Unfortunately, I have now been put off this healthsome lunch option forever as on this occasion I found a 2 inch long splinter nestling amongst the greenery. For me, the experience brought back grisly memories of my tortured childhood. As a pupil of St Ubald’s School for Young Gentlemen, I was frequently the victim of senseless and unprovoked attacks of bullying. I was small for my age and a late developer, and young boys can be very cruel. However, I did find that my small frame was particularly well-suited for tree-climbing and I spent many hours wedged up high among the school foliage. Although not particularly comfortable, the conditions were preferable to being beaten to a bloody pulp by my boisterous ‘rugger-bugger’-type schoolfellows, but unfortunately hiding from my well-muscled foes was not without its own dangers. I was continually being splintered and Matron, who had a face like a meat sandwich, was very unsympathetic. She would never let me peel a splinter out by myself, bit by bit so it didn’t hurt, but always whipped it off with excruciating efficiency and a cry of ‘grow some balls, you wet nelly!’ For reasons I’m sure you can understand, the memories have stayed with me and finding a splinter unexpectedly in my salad brought them crashing down with such a severity that I had to retire immediately to lie in a darkened room. Subsequently, I missed my bridge game.

This sort of hygiene breach is simply unacceptable and I am distraught that I have had to experience such lax standards in your hitherto highly-regarded grocery store. In Lidl, perhaps, it can be expected, but certainly not in Waitrose. A long time ago you took on the mantle of setting the standard in British groceries and now, lamentably, you have chosen to throw your reputation down the lavatory.

I most sincerely hope you rectify this problem before other loyal customers are turned away from your brand forever. 

Yours in anguish,

Derek Haselhurst-Horton

Tesco Reply III

Dear Derek

Thank you for your email and I'm sorry for the delay in replying to you.

I'm sorry to hear that you didn't receive the £2.00 Tesco Moneycard as promised. I don't think it was the Postman's fault but rather a technical error our end.

I've now asked for this to be sent to out to you again and it should be with you as soon as possible.

It must have been very frustrating when your computer blew up but I'm glad that you've bought a laptop and can once again make contact. I can only imagine how annoying it is that you can't use your local library through no fault of your own. However, as the incident happened six years ago perhaps Mrs Freedman-Brown has now forgiven you.

It's very kind of Agatha to want to send me a Christmas card but I haven't actually got an office address which she could send it too. However, it could be sent to our Head Office in Dundee and they could perhaps forward it on.

The address is:-

Tesco Customer Service
Free Post
SCO 2298
Baird Avenue

Dundee
DD2 3TN

I'm pleased to hear that you are going to have some peace and quiet over Christmas and will be able to enjoy the green triangles. I like these as well along with the purple ones, it we’re thinking of the same sweets.

Please pass my best wishes onto Agatha and I hope you both enjoy the festive holiday.

Thanks again for taking the time to get in touch.

Kind regards

Pat

Tesco Customer Service

Tesco (Rotten Avocado II)

Dear Pat,

Thank you very much for your email, and please allow me to apologise most profusely for the tardiness of my reply. Unfortunately our computer suffered a bout of spontaneous internal combustion last month and I have been unable to make contact through electronic mail during the last few weeks. I did endeavour to go to the library to use the communal “PCs” but unfortunately I was ejected from the premises before I had even “logged in”. Six years ago I used to frequent the library quite regularly until I had a furious row with Mrs Freedman-Brown, the joyless and sunken-faced trollop who ran the place, about some extortionate library fines that had been levied against me. The tome in question wasn’t even within my sphere of interests; it was in fact a copy of The Jolly Pocket Postman that Agatha must have taken out without telling me for Augustus. I know it wasn’t I who borrowed it because the only thing I have ever wanted to put in that repulsive brat’s pocket is a small hand grenade or perhaps some maple syrup before tossing him into an enclosure of ravenous bears. Fortunately, his mother has managed to sober up and keep her legs together long enough to take them both on a ski holiday this Christmas, where I am hopeful that one or both of them will seriously injure themselves. Even if they come back unscathed, at least I don’t have to endure their screams of hysterical puerility over the holiday season or their eating of all the green triangle chocolates out of the Quality Street.

After I had been escorted from the library premises by the odious librarian, Agatha and I went to PC World to try and purchase a new computer. After much discussion with a young man called Horace we opted for one of the new “laptops”, so called because one sits with it atop their lap. Or on a table, whichever is most convenient. It really is quite a versatile machine. In fact, at this very second I am typing this out whilst using the lavatory. Agatha forgot to buy my Bran Flakes last time she went to Marks and Spencer so really this new “laptop” could not have come at a better time, especially as I have already read the most recent issue of Reader’s Digest from cover to cover. I do find a potent mixture of whisky and prune juice sends to alleviate the problem fairly quickly though, so do try that if you ever find yourself in a similar situation.

Back to business, I regret I must inform you that the £2 gift card you graciously offered me to compensate for my inedible avocados has failed to arrive. I wouldn’t be surprised if it was due to the vagrants who handle the post these days, who are in my humble opinion amongst the most unscrupulous, ill-mannered and uncouth dregs of society. I meant to alert you sooner but, as you can see, I have been unable to get hold of you in the customary way. You must give me your office postal address so in emergencies such as this I am able to communicate with you. Also, Agatha has expressed a wish to send you a Christmas card this year.

Yours festively,

Derek Haselhurst-Horton

Andrex

Dear Sirs,

I am writing to commend you on the softness, strength and astonishingly pleasant aroma of your new Shea butter lavatory paper. I’ve not experienced such a delightful sensation across my buttocks since I was seventeen and the pastor’s wife took an unexpected shine to me. This was back in the day when the seduction of minors was commonly accepted if not actively encouraged, and I spent many happy Sunday afternoons learning the art of love from a patient and kind woman. I attended a single-sex boarding school in my youth and at an age riddled with sexual frustration, I was extremely grateful not to have to satisfy my hormonal desires by abusing myself while watching Matron, who had the figure, complexion and charm of a London bus, getting undressed through a knothole in room 3B. When the pastor’s wife eventually lost interest in me and moved on to one of my contemporaries, a repulsive and chinless young blister by the name of Harry Futtock, I was utterly heartbroken and vowed never to accept the illicit advances of middle-aged women again. 

Regardless of the tumultuous events of my boyhood, I really feel I must reiterate my esteem for your new innovation in bum-wiping. I’ve never known something which is essentially there to remove remnants of faeces to be not only to be so luxuriously thick but also so sweet-smelling. It is actually of superior quality to the bedding at school, which was so itchy and uncomfortable that I barely got a wink of sleep in fourteen miserable years. My only complaint is the packaging; I know the Andrex brand is famous for its golden Labrador puppies – and incidentally, what happens to them once they’ve grown up? Do you sell them on to laboratories? – but I really do find it quite discriminatory towards cat-lovers. Our own cat, Throgmorton, is very territorial and becomes extremely distressed with even a printed image of a dog in the house. There have actually been a few incidents where he has attacked Andrex packaging and utterly destroyed several rolls of lavatory paper, which, although worth every penny, does not come cheap.

So, to summarise, I think your products are wonderful. To my mind they are the equivalent of a thirty-second spa experience, but please do away with your puppies. It’s unfair to those of us who aren’t dog people.

Yours obsequiously,

Derek Haselhurst-Horton

Tesco (Avocados) Reply

Dear Derek,

Thanks for your very entertaining email. I'm sorry that I haven't managed to reply to you sooner.

I do indeed converse with many customers in my role but don't normally have such amusing emails such as yours to read.

I'm sorry that you've had such a hard time whilst visiting your godchildren. It sounds like it was a very traumatic experience. Of course, this wouldn't have been helped by the fact that the avocados were of such poor quality and 'minging' as described by Honoria. I can see by the attached photos that she was quite right.

As one of our most loyal customers, I'm sure that you appreciate that this certainly isn't the standard of produce we usually offer to our customers and are horrified that these were for sale and bought by yourself.

Regrettably, it's not possible for me to send you replacement avocados in the post but I've instead sent a £2.00 Tesco Moneycard to your home address for you to spend as you please. I hope that if you purchase some more avocados, they will be of excellent quality and Honoria and Augustus may enjoy them.

Thanks again for getting in touch and please give my best wishes to your wife, Agatha.

Kind Regards

Pat Cronin
Tesco Customer Service

Tesco (Rotten Avocado)

Dear Pat,

I hope you are well; it has been some time since we last conversed. I’m sure you correspond with many people in your role as a customer services representative but you may recall that some time ago I had a near-traumatic experience with some garlic bread that was nowhere near as garlicky as I had been led to believe.

Since we last spoke, I have been forced to spend a lot of time with my detestable godchildren, Honoria and Augustus. They are the foul spawn of one of Agatha’s old school friends and I loathe them with the intensity of one thousand suns. They are loud, obnoxious and ill-mannered and frankly when I was their age I wouldn’t have been able to do half the things they get away with without feeling the buckle end of my father’s belt. Spare the rod and spoil the child, say I, and these two young blots on the landscape are nothing but spoiled. Quite frankly I’d like to find quite a large rod – a curtain pole, perhaps – and bring it down over both their reprehensible little skulls.

When Honoria and Augustus are at the Haselhurst-Horton residence, which is far too often as their mother is an idle alchoholic whore, I take a perverse pleasure in exercising my authority as master of the household over them. To date I have issued no fewer than 122 directives, which include the banning of spitting, swearing, sweating, breathing or laughing too loudly, chewing gum, slurping, passing wind, belching, scowling, smiling and getting in the way of our cat, Throgmorton, who has priority seating privileges at all times. As Agatha is bent on constantly indulging the little brats and refuses to deny them anything they want (this is grossly unfair as I, a fully-grown man, am only allowed half a chocolate digestive with my afternoon tea) the role of nutritionist has fallen to me. Loathe as I am to prolong the pint-sized bastards’ lifespan any more than necessary, there is an illicit thrill to be had from forcing vegetative matter down their throats, particularly Augustus, whose corpulence is such that I suspect he may soon be the proud owner of his own gravitational field.

Yesterday I stopped by at the my local Tesco to pick up some new and exciting vegetables with which to torture Augustus and picked up a packet of organic avocados. I very much resent paying £1.97 for a pack of three but unfortunately there weren’t any alternatives. Now, I know that avocados have a notoriously short window of optimal deliciousness, but the first one I cut up was more rotten than Augustus’ back teeth, which have already needed five fillings even though he is only nine. As you can see from the attached photograph, it certainly wasn’t in an edible state even though its best-before was before 5th November.

Honoria, who normally is as capable of as intelligent remarks as a rabid weasel, described the avocado as 'minging', which I believe in this instance means a deplorable disregard for health and safety on the part of Tesco supermarkets. Who knows what this festering piece of vegetation was harbouring?

I would be very appreciative if you would arrange to have a new avocado sent to me immediately.

Yours disgustedly,

Derek Haselhurst-Horton

Loch Fyne

Dear Sirs,

I am writing to complain about a nightmarish experience I had recently at your branch in Milton Keynes. To be completely blunt, I wasn’t hugely inclined to dine at your restaurant in the first place; after a documentary I watched about open sewer being tipped into the ocean I don’t usually touch so much as a prawn. The idea of eating something that may have been tainted with my own faeces frankly turns my stomach. Secondary to this, all fish remind me of the various occasions during my schooldays when I was beaten about the face with a raw kipper as punishment for underperforming in sport. Unfortunately, I was a sickly child and suffered from asthma but my fellow students were unsympathetic and ruthless. On one memorable occasion a young brute by the name of Thwaites struck me repeatedly with said aquatic fauna until our House Master, Mr Capstick, burst onto the scene like a knight in shining armour. Taking Thwaites by the scruff of the neck, he dragged the wretch into his office to whip him within an inch of his life. I must admit I took a dark and perverse pleasure in hearing Thwaites’ screams of pain from down the corridor and even now, fifty years on, thinking of it gives me an agreeable warming sensation on cold winter’s days.

Fond memories of Thwaites’ well-deserved flogging aside, I was persuaded by my good lady-wife Agatha to visit your seafood eatery last Friday with my odious godchildren, Honoria and Augustus. I ordered the plaice and was pleasantly surprised to find that despite my misgivings, the fish was actually quite delicious. I was enjoying my new-found fondness for pan-fried creatures of the deep when I saw something that makes me nauseous even to recall: a slug writhing under the skin of my lunch. Stifling a scream, I caught the attention of a waitress, who explained that the gruesome thing was in fact an egg-sack that was moving because of the heat.

You have completely and utterly ruined seafood for me. The very thought that I may have accidentally consumed the black pustule brings bile up in my throat and makes me feel quite lightheaded. I had already had an abhorrent day with someone else’s revolting offspring and this incident just plummeted the day into new levels of horror and revulsion. I believe that all fish ought to be properly gutted before serving, especially in restaurants where I am expected to pay through the nose for it.

Please ensure this never happens again, or I foresee some closures by the Health Inspector.

Yours stomach-churningly,

Derek Haselhurst-Horton