Entering the umpteenth aisle of our local supermarket last Saturday, equality and diversity training was not on the top of my shopping list.
We were about 15 minutes into our visit when I became vaguely aware of an Asian lady shopping about two thirds of the way along the aisle. As Jane (my wife) pursued some type of rice that I have never heard of, I couldn’t help but notice the lady I had spotted earlier was still in the same place as when I had first seen her. I watched, now quite intrigued, her eyes scanning the shelves in front of her, up and down and side to side; she was clearly looking for something. As she stepped slowly backwards, still scanning the shelves you could see a sense relief as she spotted what she was searching for, on the top shelf.
She looked around; her plight immediately obvious, she stood about 1.2 metres tall (about 4 feet in old money), I’m about 5 feet 9 inches and the top shelves were above my eye level. The lady looked up as a member of staff appeared at the end of the aisle. She put her hand up as though to attract his attention. He scurried by clutching a sandwich in one of those plastic wrappers; lunch was clearly higher on his agenda. Touching Jane on the arm and pointing down the aisle, I mounted the nearest white horse and galloped to the lady’s rescue. She beamed as I left her clutching a bottle of extra hot, strange looking chutney.
I couldn’t help thinking as I walked back to rejoin Jane, it’s all well and good for our supermarkets to take advantage of the profitable aspects of equality & diversity; wider ranges of unusual foods and other diverse goods, but what about embracing the fundamental equality issues too? Perhaps they should get back to basics, remove the blinkers and simply aim to profit from providing accessibility for all.
By John Freshney| Righttrack’s Operations Manager