Somewhat off topic we know but hopefully you’ll be getting the same perverse pleasure as us knowing that around Christmas there will be some in-house lawyers having to stock shelves and deal with Tesco customers face to face. It appears they only brought it on themselves with that wildly inaccurate recent profit overstatement.
Thankyou to the Lawyer magazine / website who brought this to our attention via their latest editorial below,,
Tesco sends its legal team to shop checkouts
Shoppers on the run up to Christmas may find Tesco’s legal team stocking shelves and manning checkouts as part of a new campaign to put them in touch with what is going on inside the supermarket’s shops.
Executives and the company’s legal team will be taking time out of their normal schedules to spend time at shops once every fortnight to comply with chief executive Dave Lewis’ new campaign.
Tesco general counsel Adrian Morris and 25 others lawyers in his team will be sent to the shop floors over the next three months as part of a campaign called Feet on the Floor.
Of course the move has been sparked by Tesco’s admission of profit overstatement, which was made after a whistleblower got in touch with Morris. The supermarket has drafted in Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer to investigate and yesterday the Financial Conduct Authority said it would also look into the affair.
This tactic to reconnect with customers and shop workers is not new: Sainsbury’s and Asda (with CEO Andy Clarke who started his own career on the supermarket’s shop floor) have also invested in these kinds of schemes, the latter also encouraging external advisers to spend time in the supermarket’s aisles.
So next time you’re hunting for out-of-season pomegranates on your weekly shop, spare a thought for the Tesco in-houser dealing with its customer’s moans.
