Tesco teaspoon ban is long overdue

Tescos has very clear ideas of what it should and should not sell to teenagers. When 16 year old Liam Whelan tried to buy a packet of teaspoons from his local branch the self-service till refused to accept his payment. Pluckily the young lad took his case to the store manager, who refused to bend the rules. Liam even produced his moped licence which the manager examined carefully; to no avail.

At his age, with his licence, Liam could lawfully leave school, have sex, join the army, get married and ride his tuk-tuk all the way to Timbuctoo. What he could not do, said the manager, was buy a packet of teaspoons, orĀ  even a single teaspoon, from Tescos. For that, he would have to wait until his eighteenth birthday.

The rationale for the no-teaspoons for teens policy, which Tescos have enforced for the last 5 years, may seem a little opaque and one struggles at first to think of exactly what Tescos think Liam might do if he managed to get his hands on a teaspoon, let alone a whole packet. Continue reading “Tesco teaspoon ban is long overdue”