Tescos Employee Disappointed Not To Reach Company Valentine’s Day Standards

12th February 2004

A Tesco’s Employee has been left devastated after he was told he did not meet the company’s requirements to wear an ‘Ideal For Valentine’s Day” sticker. With Valentine’s Day this Saturday, the UK’s leading Supermarket chain has taken to labelling several of its products with ‘Ideal For Valentines Day’ – from red roses to its finest ready meals.

Predictably, some of Tesco’s staff have taken to sticking the stickers to each other, in an effort to liven up their day at work. Despite the usual strict attitude towards working behaviour typical with most national employers, Tescos has said that they have no problem with staff attaching the stickers to each other – providing the staff members follow a set of guidelines listing the quality criteria describing whether or not a staff member is of a high enough quality to wear the sticker.

A leading commercial manager explained the decision, “To be honest, I have no problem with staff members wearing ‘Ideal For Valentine’s Day’ stickers. Most of them are bone-idle and cost us more money than they make so if we can flog them for a one-night stand they might actually make us a profit.

“However, I cannot allow all staff members to wear the stickers, particularly those brandishing the stickers from our Finest range. Let’s face it, a typical checkout operator or shelf stacker is hardly the best looking fish in the sea, even when compared to non metaphorical fish, so it’s important to ensure Tesco’s quality standards are met when staff start distributing the stickers amongst themselves.”

Employees were shocked by the news when the memo was placed on the staff notice board, but most chose to ignore the memo and continued to sticker each other with the pink labels.

One man, Keith Wilson from a Tesco’s manufacturing plant, was not as laid back about the decision:

“When the memo was posted listing the set of criteria on which a staff member should fail – I failed on all issues raised meaning that under no circumstances would I be allowed in a Tesco’s superstore brandishing even a fragment of the sticker.

“To make matters worse, I am one of the factory’s Quality Inspectors. This means that if someone stuck a sticker to me and I did not remove it I would get fired twice. Once for being too unattractive to wear the sticker, but also in my capacity as a Quality Inspector for failing to remove a sticker from an unattractive person.”

Mr Wilson has admitted this is just the tip of the iceberg:

“Normally things like this wouldn’t bother me, but I’ve been deemed too unattractive to meet Tesco’s quality standards. And as a Tesco’s Quality Inspector I know just how rubbish they are.”