Name: Private Lives. Part 7. | BBC Learning English.
Uploaded: 2026-02-26T12:58:36.000Z
Duration: 11 min 24 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

He is the manager of a large supermarket owned by Sainsbury's, one of the biggest food store companies in Britain.

During the programme we'll join Alan in his office and on the shop floor.

We'll hear him talk about the kind of people who shop in the supermarket and what they buy.

But before we look at what's on offer in British supermarkets, we learn a little about Alan's life.

Alan was born in a small town on the west coast of Scotland where he and his brothers went to the local secondary school.

The family lived in a council house, basic housing owned by the state.

I've got a mother and father and three brothers.

In terms of hobbies, at a younger age was obviously football mad.

Every Saturday and Sunday, Alan's pipe band took part in local competitions.

And when Alan and his school friends weren't playing traditional Scottish music, they listened to the latest records by the rock group Status Quo.

Now really I'm quite happy to listen to most music.

Probably as a child would never have dreamt about getting involved in classical.

We always thought it was a bit softy, but I thoroughly enjoy it now.

After he left school, Alan became a trainee metallurgist.

But a possible career studying metals came to an end when the company he was working for ran into financial difficulties and he was made redundant.

Alan joined the Royal Navy as an officer and met Judy, who became his wife.

When I left the pipe band I gave up drumming for quite a while and certainly when I got married one of my dreams was to have a drum kit which I eventually bought, but

subsequently I had to sell it about eight months later because the next door neighbors and half the street were banging on my door demanding that it went.

But one day I will ultimately get a drum kit again.

Alan left the Royal Navy after two and a half years and became a trainee manager at Sainsbury's.

Now he's one of their most successful store managers and the branch he's in charge of is typical of many other large out of town supermarkets in affluent parts of Britain.

Most British cities and towns have out of town shopping centres.

These have a large supermarket with a large car park.

There's also often a petrol station, a do it yourself hardware store, one or two fast food Restaurants and sometimes a multi screen cinema.

This is my office, rather small and cramped considering the size of the building.

On my desk I have a VDU which enables me to access into the systems that we have within the store.

And above the desk I have my various files, the most important one being my profit and loss account.

Also in the office we've got a CCTV that's an internal television system that allows us to monitor various areas within the store.

So at the moment it's focused in on one of our checkouts and checkout operators.

There are 30 checkouts in this supermarket where customers pay for their goods.

Checkout operators pass each item over an electronic scanner which reads the price and produces an itemized bill for the customer.

There are over 20,000 commodities on sale in the store, including fresh fruit, vegetables, meat and fish, frozen food, bread and cakes, alcoholic and non alcoholic drinks and baby foods.

There's also cleaning products, cooking utensils, children's toys and newspapers.

Alan describes his customers as upmarket.

They can afford to buy expensive products.

They also don't have much time to shop or cook so they tend to buy a lot of ready made meals.

Usually the type of shopper we have are interested in getting out the store as quickly as possible.

That may seem a funny thing, but time is precious for people that live around here.

We have a lot of professional types, working mums and so therefore they want to come into the store, buy and leave as quickly as possible.

As a result of that we sell a great deal of ready prepared product so that could be ready prepared salad packs, ready meals, so that you basically stick the product in the oven and it's on the table within half an hour or so at home.

Like many British people, Alan and his wife enjoy eating food from other countries.

If Alan cooks at all, it's with a wok, a large bowl shaped pan used for Chinese style cooking.

However, Alan and Judy do sometimes sit down to a traditional British Sunday lunch of roast beef and Yorkshire pudding.

As far as my own shopping habits are concerned, I'm afraid I don't tend to get too involved in that.

Having worked in a supermarket all day, I tend to leave the shopping to my wife.

In terms of the type of product that we tend to buy at home, our heating habits have changed over the years.

I used to be a meat and two veg man, a typical British pastime.

But recently we've tended to move to things like pasta that we eat quite a bit of.

I have a wok so I now tend to Walk things.

My wife is very happy about that because at least I'm doing it.

We do have a Sunday lunch from time to time and again.

We do eat out generally maybe once or twice a week.

Alan isn't tempted to do any shopping after a hard day's work running the supermarket.

As manager, he's responsible for making a profit.

To make a profit, he must ensure that the supermarket shelves are well stocked with whatever customers want to buy.

Today, Alan predicts good sales of meat which can be cooked on a barbecue, salad, drinks and ice cream.

I believe it's going to be about 25 degrees outside and we really need to react to the customer needs.

They will be looking to have barbecue products, they will be looking to be buying salad, they will be looking to buy drinks, they will be looking to buy ice cream.

That type of product eating outside is becoming more and more popular in Britain.

Alan leads us onto the shop floor and as we walk along the long aisle of refrigerated meat, we see staff unloading fresh packs of meat for summer evening barbecues.

Then we stop in the middle of another long aisle.

Here there are shelves and shelves of pet food.

In Britain we are somewhat renowned for our pets.

We now within this store have a display in excess of 40ft full of canned cat food and dog food and other foods for other pets such as canaries.

We do have very large sales on pet food within the company and that is reflected in the type of footage that we actually have within every store.

You can have chicken, you can have liver, you can have beef, you can have pheasants, you can have combinations of beef and game.

Any sort of product that you can think of that your pet might like, I'm sure that we can supply it.

Myself, I have a couple of canaries at home.

As we walk back to his office, Alan says that he likes hearing the sound of birdsong at home.

Alan and his wife live on the outskirts of London in a bungalow with a very well cared for green lawn.

Home improvements, like putting up wallpaper is not Alan's favourite pastime.

We've been married 14 years now and this is our fifth house.

We live in a three bedroomed bungalow with a double garage.

We have a fairly large ish garden which I delegate everything to my wife other than the lawn, which I do take great pride in my lawn and I'm forever being told off for buying all this expensive fertilizer and lawnmowers, etc, etc, but

And I work hard on making sure that looks the business.

As far as DIY concerned, you're looking at the world's worst diy.

I tried desperately to get a decorator in to do it, but

unfortunately we weren't able to get one, believe it or not.

I've never been so stressed in my life in putting wallpaper up.

Alan would much rather relax in his home than decorate it.

What does he enjoy doing when he's not spending time at home?

Listen, when I get in from work, it really depends on the time of year.