“You’ll Need To Spend Another €3 To Redeem Voucher”: Woman Recalls Supermarket Horror
WATERFORD woman Charlotte Hogan tried her best to relax as psychotherapist Dr Pierce Dempsey counted down from ten, in the final of several regression therapy sessions to pinpoint her shopping anxiety.
“The queue behind me was seven deep,” the 36-year-old mother-of-two recalled of Halloween 2025, the year she started developing fears of non-ALDI supermarkets. “I was buying with something called a rewards voucher.”
However, Hogan began trembling and shaking her head side to side on the therapist’s sofa.
“No, no… please… not now!” she began shouting as Dr Dempsey tried to slowly ease her back out of the trance.
“The queue… everyone in the queue is staring at me,” she screamed, her face frozen in terror.
“Why are you holding up the queue, Charlotte?”
“The till lady. She said I need to spend another €3 to avail of the voucher! Now I’ve to spend my last bit of cash, and I need that for petrol,” she said, thrashing about in the chair, arms flailing like an inflatable tube man outside a car sales garage.
“Relax now Charlotte. Tell me what you see?”
“Terms and conditions. I’m shouting now. More like unreal rewards! I’m shouting this over and over. Everyone is looking at me.”
“Shush now Charlotte, everything is alright now. Please, think of a happy place where you feel more at home,” the doctor requested, as a warm smile emerged on Charlotte’s face.
“Oh thank God… it’s so nice here. Back to my happy place… the middle aisle,” she said in a calm and clear voice this time, sinking into the chair.
“Are you in ALDI again?” the doctor asked, now confirming his findings over the sessions that she may have a condition called ‘clubcardophobia’. “You’re looking at the €5.99 Halloween costumes again, aren’t you?”
“I’m definitely picking two of those up, one for each side of the front door. And the pumpkins and sweets from 99c,” she replied, now gently waking up from her trance like a weight had been lifted.
Writing her a prescription, Dr Dempsey simply scribbled: “ALDI. No catches, no clubcards. Just €5.99 costumes, pumpkins and sweets from 99c. It’s Not Complicated.”
