As Morrisons was the nearest supermarket I ended up there three times during the week. On two of these I was turfed out when the fire alarm went off. Everybody had to leave but, once outside, we all hung around the door.

On the second of those occasions I was in the company of a former Emergency Response Officer and he was appalled at how the whole exercise was handled. He pointed out that if there was an actual fire it would engulf the building very quickly and the front glass would blow out and seriously injure us all.

The staff seemed to be better trained in their own interest and they all made for an assembly point well clear of the building. No one made any attempt to move the customers to a corresponding assembly point.

Then when it was all over, we all just trouped back into the shop. No apologies or anything like that, despite the damned alarm having twice malfunctioned in a week. Something really sloppy going on there.

As it happened, many of those who were evacuated decamped to the new Aldi which had just opened down the road. Morrisons will have to look to their laurels. I met one person who said they would never shop in the place again after they way they had been treated.

I tweeted a link to this page to Morrisons and got a reply asking for my contact details. We'll see what happens. Meanwhile the tweet was retweeted by More Reasons and a look at their timeline suggests that Morrisons are in deep shit. So it ooks like I'm not alone here.

I had to tweet the link because the Gilmerton Rd. store is not on the map or store list on Morrison's own website and that site wouldn't let me send a message without a postcode for the store concerned. Catch 22 and more slopiness.

The map on Morrisons' own website. I have shown in red where the missing store should be. I really don't understand this.

Even the common, non-Morrisons, Google map shows the store clearly. You would think they were trying to make it difficult for customers to contact them via their site. Perish the thought.



Following my tweeting my contact details to Morrisons over the weekend, at their request, I was, this afternoon, contacted by telephone by the Gilmerton store manager. She had been alerted to this post by Head Office (who operate Morrisons' Twitter account) and she was contacting me to bring me up to date on Morrisons' response to my comments.

It appears the alarms were set of (i) by a fault in the sprinkler system, and (ii) by some youths who had broken a window.

I had the impression that my comments were being taken seriously and she told me she had checked out CCTV and that my description of the events was confirmed. Apparently, the customers should have been shepherded to the same assembly point as the staff and clear of the building. She told me that there had been changes recently in top management at HQ and that there were encouraging signs that this would make a difference.

I said that I had been monitoring the More Reasons Twitter account (referred to above) and that it seemed to me that (i) stores were understaffed, (ii) staff attitudes to customers were very bad and (ii) this particular store not appearing on the map was just unbelievable.

She told me that on foot of management changes at the top, (i) they were recruiting more staff (possibly 30 for the Gilmerton Store alone), (ii) staff were being retrained regarding the appropriate treatment of customers, (iii) implementation of fire alarm response was being corrected and would include an apology to customers for the inconvenience, and (iv) IT Central had been alerted to the absence of the store on Morrisons' own map.

At least I was contacted and I had what I hope was a mutually informative, 20 minute, discussion with the manager. I won't be around personally to observe progress as I was only visiting the area at the time, but I wish her well in her efforts to generally improve the customer experience, as it is described nowadays.




Well, I've solved the map thing, but it's still nuts. If I look for stores near "Edinburgh" the Gilmerton Rd. store does not show despite being within the ring road. But if I put in "Gilmerton Edinburgh" it turns up, as do two of the stores from the previous map but not all. If I put in either "Gilmerton" or "Moredun" on their own it does not show up. Not logical, whatever way you look at it. Still needs a visit from IT Dept. And remember the store itself has been there for 15 years, apparently.


And just by the way, I suddently remembered an encounter with Morrisons in Caernarfon in 2005 as they took over the local Safeways.



As it happens I'm back briefly in Edinburgh and I took the opportunity to call in to see the Manager and check out progress.

For those who haven't been following this saga, you can scroll up to the top to see it in detail. In general, the situation was that, following my experience of two false fire alarms within a week, involving evacuating the store, I entered into correspondence with Morrisons on some deficiencies in the way these emergencies were dealt with. After returning to Dublin I ended up talking to the Manager (Eva Wallace) in a fairly extensive phonecall. This was at a time when Morrisons, which had been on the slide, had just got a new CEO to sort out the company. There was much talk of management listening to customers and that sort of thing but it was not clear at that stage whether substantive changes could be expected or whether this was all just a PR exercise.

Well from my extensive discussion, in person, with the Manager this morning I am glad to be able to report that things are looking up. The new CEO, David Potts formerly of Tesco, seems to have shaken up the place. He has slimmed down the management structure, which prior to his coming had been growing at the expense of frontline staff. He has closed a number of unprofitable stores and pared the company back to its core activities. At the same time he has recruited a load of new frontline staff and their training, along with that of existing staff, has been intensified.

Gilmerton Morrinsons have so fare got 28 additional staff and there may be more on the way. Channels of communication within the company have improved and management are more aware of the situation on the ground. The CEO and Directors now pay unannounced visits to their stores replacing the former practice of giving plenty of warning (time to paint not only the railway station but the town for the Queen's visit).

So here's all the best to Eva who clearly has her heart in the business.