Tuesday 29 January 2013

Health and Safety with a Humorous Touch

Anyone who has ever been accompanied by a small child when out shopping knows the trials and temptations therein.

Leroy Merlin's current advertising campaign aimed at parents made us smile. Posters up around the store and leaflets to take away and read at leisure (!) warn of the dangers lurking there...

......the cars on the car park, the sliding doors at the store entrance, the sharp things, heavy things, toxic things and cutting things, the risk of choosing the wrong trolley...


Parents are advised, if possible, to:
 "prenez....un chariot dote d'un *siege enfant" (take a trolley with child seat). 

Then comes the really silly bit: parents are told if they observe all these guidelines they can conduct their shopping "sereinement"..

Now call me lacking in imagination, but serene is not a word I would ever have used to describe my emotions whilst shopping with children in tow.

*Interestingly the French word "siege" has two meanings, namely seat and siege... Yes; that speaks volumes!

4 comments:

Susan said...

Having witnessed a pair of children happily removing all the plumbing material from a shelf and constructing some fantasy cubby house of their own design in the aisle of Bricomarché I know why these leaflets have appeared. It has nothing to do with H&S, it has to do with how pissed off at having their time wasted the staff of these stores are. I had a conversation with one of the store assistants who confirmed that he spends a ridiculous amount of time every day putting things back from where kids have moved them to.

Colin and Elizabeth said...

Susan, I agree in part with your comment but I must come out in defence of children here.. How many times do we see adults putting something they have chosen back on any old shelf because they have changed their mind over the purchase??

It doesn't just happen in DIY shops either. I saw someone leave a pack of prawns on a shelf in the tinned foods area of a supermarket when we were back in England. They gave no thought to the fact that the prawns should have been in a chilled cabinet and would therefore be wasted.

Susan said...

Indeed, indeed, too true. I've seen just as thoughtless behaviour in my local supermarket in England.

Tim said...

I always thought there was some kind of gnome that devoted its time to putting odd things on supermarket shelves. Whenever we see a packet of biscuits in with the floor cleaner, we say "they've been here again"! Pauline