Things that cannot be bought at my local Albert Heijn

Albert Heijn (AH) classify their size of store from 1-5 (1 being the smallest, 5 being the biggest). The store nearest me is categorised as a size 4, so you’d expect it to be pretty big and stock pretty much everything you’d need or want. Not so.

Here’s a list of things I’m not able to find in my local Albert Heijn:

Lamb
No Lamb of any variety: no minced lamb, diced lamb, lamb steak, lamb chops. Nothing. Amsterdam is full of Turks, you’d think they would want to buy some lamb? Oh I forgot, everyone in Holland has the time to traipse around the butchers, bakers and candlestick maker’s shops every single day to get their groceries.

Limes
My Albert Heijn always stock lemons, oranges, mangoes and pomegranates, but no limes.

Fruit Squash / Ribena
I don’t understand what kids drink here. Parents have the option of buying either really expensive fruit juices, or carbonated drinks for their kids. The other option, which I wouldn’t go near, is something like the French Diablo, which the Dutch call Sirop, and is pure sugar in a tin. I guess they just rely on good old fashion milk, and chocolate milk (also full of sugar).

Double or Single Cream
There’s only whipping cream, sour cream and crème fraiche here in the Netherlands it seems. And you’d never pour whipping cream on an apple pie, as that would be sacrilege, you MUST whip it first. (Oh yes and rather hilariously whipped cream translates into Dutch as "slagroom"!)

Pantene Hair Products
I was truly astounded at this one. Procter and Gamble what are you doing to me? The hair product aisle in my category 4 Albert Heijn is four shelves high by about 8 products wide and includes L’Oreal, Dove and something called Andrélon (made by Unilever) which dominates the shelf in garish purple packaging. Compare this to the hair product range in my old Tesco in London which was about 10 metres wide and had every product under the sun, except Andrélon.

Serious Breakfast Cereals
First, it’s impossible to by a box of cereal over 500g. It’s like buying mini cereal boxes from a Kellog’s selection pack. I need to buy two boxes to last the week. And talking of selection, don’t get me started on the range of cereals available in Holland. The narrow shelf here has Fruit and Fibre, “Cruseli”, Jordans Muesli (pronounced in the not-so Biggleswade/Bedfordshire accent of “Yoordaans”), Cornflakes, Special K and something based on sawdust. Weetabix, if available, only comes in boxes of 12 – that would last one person only six days – does everyone in Holland live alone?

Boodschappen Nightmare

Maybe it’s just me. Maybe I’ve been completely spoiled by the British half-wit attempt at good customer service, or maybe, just maybe, I’m not the only one that gets into a semi-panic every time I want to pack and pay for my grocery items at the Dutch supermarket Albert Heijn (AH). In reality, everything about the queuing system here is wrong, annoying or just down-right rude.

I’m told by my family here in Holland that if there are more than three people in a queue then good old AH promise they will open another till. I had hoped that this would be comparable to Tesco’s ‘One in Front’ campaign that successfully minimises waiting time for customers. But arrive at an Albert Heijn in the early evening and of the miserable five cash tills available only two will be open. There will, therefore, be lengthy queues at both – we’re talking seven or eight people. It turns out that the ‘Three in a line’ idea is a Dutch customer service fable.



Once in a blue moon, by some stroke of luck, one of the staff suddenly notices that they haven’t actually been doing anything useful for the last ten minutes and that they could help out by opening a till. Then, it seems, the people in the queue have no concept at all of ‘first come first served’ and instead it’s normally the tallest, youngest or fittest person that ends up the first at the newly opened till. This surprised me. The Dutch are normally such an overly-fair, almost socialist nation, but in queuing situations it’s everyman for himself.

My queuing experience normally goes something like this….

After about 15 minutes of queuing like a sheep, I finally reach the front and it’s my turn. It’s then I think to myself that I better set my stop watch for the time trial I’m about to face. The cashiers here have zero empathy with their customers, none what-so-ever. Maybe they think that because I’m so fed up queuing that I’m now so desperate to leave the shop that I now possess the super-human capability to pack my items at light speed. So they zap each item passed the scanner and my shopping passes down my slim half of the partitioned conveyor belt to the end. Then the next item quickly follows, then the next, the next, the next, the next. Until I’ve got such a big pile of shopping in front of me that the most recently scanned items are squashing the first items, to the extent that I can’t actually pack the first items anymore because they are so tightly jammed together. So much for my time-tested strategy of trying to pack the heavier, more resilient, items first. Instead I’m forced to pack the tomatoes, crisps and lettuces first, at the bottom of my bag, just because they are the only things free enough to physically remove from the pile.

The girl has now finished zapping my shopping, proud of her record attempt, and expects me to pay, NOW! Although I’ve only been able to pack one carton of orange juice, fabric conditioner, tomatoes, lettuce, crisps and four tins of tomatoes (in that order) I’ll get an evil glare if I don’t come back around, away from the carnage that has ensued at my end of the till, to face her and pay immediately. Even though the cashier is oblivious to them, I now become acutely aware of the long queue of people behind me, and so I quickly pay, so that she can make a start on zapping the next person’s groceries. Big mistake…because then the nightmare really begins…

Not only are my items squashed under their own weight, now the cashier needs to make room for the next persons shopping so she forces, shoves, pushes and wrenches the separating arm dividing the narrow conveyor belt against my shopping, packing it in even tighter. Push, shove, it won’t go, but she continues to zap and zip those items through regardless. The conveyor belt whizzes my neighbors’ shopping downhill, simultaneously forcing my shopping tighter and tighter against the end of the till too.

When I finally manage to separate my groceries from each other and pack them haphazardly into bags I’m exhausted, wishing never to return again. I normally leave muttering complaints and suggestions semi-loudly under my breath as I pass by the two idle AH staff sitting around at the cigarette and newspaper counter positioned near the exit.

It’s not that Albert Heijn is cheaper than the competition, it’s actually one of the more expensive supermarkets in Holland. So where does all the money go? They are obviously not investing in capable staff, or training, or logistical systems to help with their poor customer service. Tesco’s even go as far as to employ heat seeking cameras, which sense the number of customers entering a store and predict the checkouts that need to be open in an hour. If Albert Heijn were to do this I think the results would be skewed by the heat coming off the customers leaving the store in a sweat.