This is Why You Won’t be Getting Your Bonus This Year

Hi, my name is John Rishton, CEO of Ahold, an international group of quality supermarkets based in the United States and Europe. Among our “brands” is a grocery store that sounds like Giant. Well it is Giant but that’s not important right now...or maybe it is. You see we have very competitive prices for a supermarket. In fact our prices are lower then our closes competitor Safeway. How much lower you ask? Well as you can see from walking into many of our stores we have a cart-to-cart comparison so you can see each item from both stores and watch the savings add up.Now the cart on the top is from Safeway with a total bill of $225.43 and on the bottom is our cart totaling only $205.32. See with our low prices you can save over $20! Now let’s hear from one of our dedicated employees, Bill.

Hi, I’m Bill and I work as a cashier here at Giant. I want to tell you about our wonderful low prices, great selection, and fresh food. I also want to ask Mr. Rishton why I’m not getting a holiday bonus.

Well Bill, you see we spent so much money on the food at Safeway along with the shopping carts, the gas and mileage to get over there and the fancy plexiglass tops to protect all that merchandise from “growing legs”. Yes, we could have given each of you $50 cash to say thanks for a great and busy holiday season but wouldn’t you rather have this handful of open salad greens that may be going bad. Just think of the fun you can have with these.

But Mr. Rishton, we would really rather have the money. Couldn’t you just return all that stuff to Safeway and just give us the cash?

No Bill, we can’t. We need to show our customers how low our prices are. How else will they know? Do you think they are smart enough to read their receipts? Do you think they will just walk into our stores because they are closer to their house and do all their shopping with out once walking out of the store driving all the way across town to Safeway, comparing their prices and then come back to our store 10 minutes later after they find we have lower prices? Besides once they go over to that new Safeway and see that they have meat in the display case that doesn’t have flies on it and peppers that aren’t browned and wrinkled do you think they’ll come back here? Gezze...you are so naïve. Now go and bag that old ladies’ groceries!