When I was young, shops wanted my money.
Now they want my data, my loyalty, my biometric markers, my purchase history, my shopping habits, my email address and possibly my soul.
To be fair, taking my money remains the driving force behind our relationship.
But modern supermarkets increasingly give the impression that they would also quite like to know me personally.
Not in a warm old-fashioned:
“lovely weather we’re having”
sort of way.
More in the:
“we noticed you purchased parmesan at 6:14pm three consecutive Thursdays”
kind of way.
When I was younger, supermarkets possessed a wonderfully simple operational model.
You entered.
You bought food.
You left.
The supermarket neither knew nor cared who you were unless you tried to leave with a roast chicken in your trousers.
Modern supermarkets increasingly feel like overly enthusiastic Tinder dates.
We have barely exchanged surnames and already they would like:
- location access,
- behavioural insights,
- app permissions,
- biometric identification,
- and permission to recognise my face on arrival.
And none of this is necessarily unreasonable.
Which is the annoying part.
Would you like personalised discounts?
Would you like faster checkout?
Would you like better security?
Would you like convenience?
Well yes.
Every advance in the human condition comes down to us collectively saying:
“well yes, that does sound easier.”
Which is how you eventually arrive at facial recognition cameras watching supermarket entrances like casinos quietly monitoring emotionally vulnerable gamblers.
The genuinely fascinating thing is that modern systems no longer simply observe behaviour.
They optimise around it.
Every interaction now generates:
- metrics,
- patterns,
- behavioural insights,
- loyalty scoring,
- optimisation opportunities,
- and deeply unsettling confidence about what sort of person you are based on your relationship with Jarlsberg.
And perhaps that is the strange emotional shift people are reacting to.
Not surveillance exactly.
Intimacy.
The supermarket appears increasingly interested in developing a comprehensive psychological profile in exchange for two dollars off mayonnaise.
I don’t object to supermarkets making money.
I’d just prefer they didn’t make quite so much, and that they didn’t know me well enough to write a character reference.
Because somewhere deep in my brain now lives the irrational suspicion that one day I will walk into the supermarket and hear the digital price tags quietly updating around me like old airport departure boards.
Ah yes. Gareth has arrived. Increase parmesan by 14%.
Which sounds ridiculous.
Right up until you check flight prices with an airline and it stops sounding ridiculous.
Anyway.
I would still quite like the loyalty special on cheese.