The Supermarket Misses Me. I’m Trying Not to Take It Personally

Retirement has left some rather odd institutions offering recognition.

The email said I had been missed. It arrived before breakfast, which is earlier than most expressions of affection these days.

For a moment I felt wanted. Then I read the rest and discovered my loyalty points were about to expire.

An organisation with substantial resources had noticed I hadn’t visited recently. It wished me to return before Sunday. There was even an exclamation mark, in case the emotional stakes were unclear.

I have received less urgent communications about matters considerably more important than discounted crumpets.

What embarrassed me wasn’t the email. It was the small lift I felt on reading it. Somebody had noticed. Granted, the somebody was a system examining my shopping history, but recognition had arrived and I had welcomed it before checking the sender.

For years, organisations contacted me because they needed what I knew. A decision. An answer. A person who would deal with the awkward part.

Now one needs me to continue buying bin liners.

The difference is obvious. The feeling, annoyingly, is less obedient to obvious differences.

Commercial attention can imitate personal attention rather well. It knows what you prefer. It remembers when you were last there. It offers something selected especially for you, although the selection may simply reflect an unexpectedly sustained commitment to marmalade.

The supermarket has examined my habits with better equipment than I ever had in the police. Its conclusion is that I might like more biscuits. I cannot fault the investigation.

Then the receipt asked about my experience. A survey. A blank box. Is there anything else I would like to say?

There was. Quite a lot, as it happened. About the self-service voice. About the pleasure of an unhurried Tuesday shop. About how a brief exchange with someone at a checkout can occupy more of the day’s social life than I care to admit.

I wrote that everything had been fine. Some answers are larger than the questioner’s legitimate interest in them.

That’s what I need to remember. A business can value my custom without knowing me. It can say welcome back without belonging in the part of life where welcome actually matters.

The assistant who says good morning is a different proposition. A real person, with a real morning, perhaps able to share a minute of conversation if the queue allows. I don’t want to confuse that with the automated enthusiasm in the inbox.

Nor do I want to become so suspicious that I miss the ordinary kindness entirely.

Retirement has given me time for that kindness. I don’t have to rush through the transaction because someone is waiting for a report. I can notice the person rather than simply the service.

There is loss in no longer being professionally required. There is also relief in being able to buy bread without a phone announcing a new emergency halfway through choosing it.

The points still expire on Sunday. I would like to claim I am above being directed by a marketing deadline.

Unfortunately, I’ve checked the opening times.

Dignity, like the crumpets, appears to be subject to availability.

---

Before you wander back into the ordinary noise of the day, do one small thing with this.

Not a grand reinvention. Not a ten-year vision board. Just a quiet refusal to drift.

Because later life has a habit of becoming whatever is left after everyone else has had their say: the pension provider, the calendar, the family WhatsApp, the old job still living rent-free in your head.

The danger is not that you fail to make a plan.

The danger is that you inherit one by default.

If this piece nudged something uncomfortable but useful, I’d start here:

The Second Act Playbook is for building the shape of the next chapter before life fills it in for you.

The Retirement Identity Check-In is for the quieter question underneath it all: who are you becoming when the old labels loosen?

One is Free the other isn’t I will leave it to you to have a look. Neither is about panic.

They are about not waking up five years from now with a tidy pension and a life that somehow forgot to include you.