IT STARTED innocently enough. “Booked my Christmas slot!!!!!” texted my friend B, accompanied by a row of Santa emojis. “Amazing!!!!!” I replied, adding three Christmas trees and a champagne emoji. She is Christmas’s number one fan. B starts planning her Christmas dinner in August. As life events go, bagsying one of Waitrose’s prized Christmas Eve delivery slots is right up there with getting front row tickets to Hackney Empire’s Christmas panto.
Her sortedness made me feel as though I should get sorted myself, in that antsy way that people who run households will recognise. I logged onto waitrose.com. No Christmas slots available: I couldn’t book more than two weeks ahead. It didn’t make sense. Curious, I tweeted Waitrose. They confirmed that they released early Christmas slots to a small number of online customers. Happy with Waitrose’s explanation, I went back to getting a life, which lasted about 10 minutes before I logged onto Ocado to find that their Christmas slots had been released, but were fully booked.
This story is from the October 25, 2021 edition of Evening Standard.
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This story is from the October 25, 2021 edition of Evening Standard.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 8,500+ magazines and newspapers.
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