Tesco staff have put up security barriers to stop shoppers from snatching reduced items out of their hands while they stock shelves.
Photos recently emerged online of workers at the UK’s leading retailer standing behind barriers with signs that read ‘do not enter’ while they tagged items with reduced price stickers.
The barriers were first introduced at the start of the Covid-19 pandemic to give staff more room to work, but they have not been pictured in stores until now.
Some workers at a Tesco branch in Bexhill-on-Sea, East Sussex, have even revealed they don’t feel safe as they do it, according to The Sun.
With food prices soaring as a result of inflation amid the cost-of-living crisis, customers have been looking to cut costs and purchase cheaper items where they can.
Essential supermarket items have risen by nearly two-thirds, with the price of pasta jumping 38p to 61p.
Vegetable oil has also jumped by 65.2%, up from £1.56 to £2.58, but this rise is partially due to the supply-chain problems caused by the war in Ukraine.
“We have seen violence and abuse against shop workers go up during the pandemic but instead of it alleviating since then, it’s getting worse,” chief executive of the British Retail Consortium (BRC), Helen Dickinson said.
Alison Garnham, chief executive of the Child Poverty Action Group (CPAG), said the new figures should be a “siren warning” to new PM Rishi Sunak.
She said: “These are grim figures for millions of hard-pressed families, and they are a siren warning to the new Government – the pledge our new prime minister made to uprate benefits with inflation must be honoured if low-income households are to get through this winter.
“Six hundred thousand London children are already living in poverty. More will join them if the Government reneges on the promise to ensure benefits match inflation.
“That would make us a country and a capital filled not with hope as the PM envisages, but with hungry children.”
The news comes as Tesco increases the price of their iconic meal deal from £3 for Clubcard holders to £3.40. For all other customers, a meal deal will be £3.90, up from £3.50.
7 Comments. Leave new
Barriers around reduced food,ppl need to be ashamed of themselves,disgusting behaviour
Every price increase is always blamed on Covid or Ukraine We have a Government who can’t govern useless leaders wasting our monies
Gets better than that. Two customers here in Edinburgh were arrested in an M & S shop last Christmas for fighting over a turkey!
Absolutely agree. I feel sorry for staff trying to put reduced sticker items on shelves without being bombarded by moronic, cannot wait shoppers!
Mate you’d be surprised how violent ppl get over reduced items. I regularly have to put them out on shelves because my colleagues are afraid to. One customers literally grabbed one of my colleagues by the neck from behind and dragged her to the floor in order to get past her. That’s how crazy they get.
I think it is redulous thank shoppers have to resort to this in this day and age.I think the government should be doing more to help everyone as they help everyone how comes into our country I am not being nasty by saying this but it’s true. As we do not have enough houses for our own people .
With the price of some foods ie meat I’m not surprised, I never get a chance on reduced foods as work night shifts and reduced shelves in my Tesco are always empty at 07:00am when I go shopping.