Doesn't all the false bonhomie in the retail sector get up your nose. Enjoy you meal chirrup food schleppers in franchise restaurants as if they are commanding you to relish the barely edible pap they have just slapped in front of you. But the one that really gets everybody is "Have a nice day."

We have learned that the most unpopular task among trainees at Asda Supermarkets is “greeting” shoppers as they arrive. A young relation currently working as Asda told my wife “people are just so rude and aggressive.” So apart from pissing custyomers off the greeting pisses off staff as well. Why would being welcomed to the store by a representative of management irritate people? Is it perhaps because we know management do not give a flying fuck about our shopping experience so long as they get our money?

The idea that people want to be greeted on arriving at the stores by a humandroid chirruping “Hello, welcome to Asda, our mission is to make your shopping experience as enjoyable as possible. Have a nice day.”

Such ideas are pure Wal – Mart of course. Asda’s American parent should have learned their lesson after the debacles of “motivational meeting’s”, prayers and group hugs, but no, this most American of American corporations just cannot understand we British don’t do God, don’t hug unnecessarily and we DON’T WANT TO HAVE A NICE DAY!

The right not to have a nice day is one of the ancient freedoms we British hold dear. And can a day be described as nice if going to ASDA to spend some of our hard earned is classed as one of its highlights?

Americans like to bang on about the basic rights and freedoms enshrined in their constitution, one of which is the pursuit of happiness. Well the rights of the American Bill of Rights are an excellent basis for the society of a free and democratic nation. But they are not British rights and freedoms. American’s cherish their right to free speech, to bear arms and to stand up and be counted in support of any cause they choose to embrace. Many people across the pond seem to think British democracy somehow deficient because we do not have a similar Bill of Rights. But freedom of speech we take for granted because we’ve had it since before writing was invented, the right to bear arms we willingly forego as we would rather keep our human arms (bear arms would look silly with a T shirt), we are reluctant to stand up and be counted, preferring to reserve the right to be counted sitting down. And we positively cherish the right to not have a nice day especially if it involves eating tasteless pap in a franchise restaurant or shufflig miserably round a supermarket wondering why the baked beans are where the beer should be.

Ay there's the rub, you see Supermarkets do not want us to have a nice day which would involve running into the store, going straight to all the stuff we want to buy because we know where it is, paying and getting out all within half an hour so we can go home and spend the rest of the day slobbing out watching DVDs, participating in healthy outdoor activities, having wild, borderline - dangerous sex while dressed in fetish gear, drinking in the pub with our mates, watching football, not readng a Dan Brown novel or doing anything else we think may make us happy.

A trip to the supermarket is not part of having a nice day. Don't these fuckwit corporate types understand that. Apart from the things already mentioned people might, after completing their shopping be going to their mother's funeral, taking the dog to the vet's, going to work, not going to work because their redundancy notice arrived in the morning post, taking a few hours off work to go to the "special" clinic, eeting the bank manager to discuss their depts or having an enema. Few people would consider any of these to be "having a nice day."

The clue, givaway that reveals how callous and uncaring retail corporations are lies in the fact that the baked beans are where the beer should be. Stuff is moved around in this way so we will have to hunt round the aisles for what we want. That way, they reason, we will be tempted to buy other stuff we dot want but like the look of. You see, they don't care about you at all, they just want your money.

. Going to the supermarket is not “an experience,” it is a chore, we want to get out stuff, pay and get out with minimum fuss. There is no benefit to us in being greeted by a chirruping humandroid who commands us to have a nice day. All staff need to do is be well informed and available to tell us where the bacon is. We will have whatever kind of day we fancy and circumstances permit. Many British people deliberately choose to have a crappy day as it gives us an excuse to go to the pub and get rat – arsed.

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